All posts tagged "Dan Caine"

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine has started to tell multiple top Trump advisers privately that he is "looking for an off-ramp" from the Iran war, CNN reported on Friday.

Three sources have said that the existing military options could end up backfiring and the conflict has reached a crossroads where air power alone "is unlikely to achieve President Donald Trump’s stated objectives."

Caine has expressed this to several key Cabinet members. Two sources revealed he has spoken directly about those concerns with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance....

A GOP senator lost his cool and demanded "straight answers" while questioning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the Iran war.

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) repeatedly asked Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chair Dan Caine for clarity. The two Trump administration officials were defending the president's request for supplemental funding for the ongoing Iran war.

As Kennedy turned to Hegseth to discuss the stakes in Iran, he prefaced one of his questions by saying, "We need some hard answers and some straight talk." Then he asked, if the U.S. doesn't continue its military campaign, "What will happen, Pete?"...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was surprised by a question during a congressional hearing on Wednesday over whether Pentagon officials were using a secret messaging app.

Hegseth appeared to be caught off guard during the House Armed Services Committee hearing when Rep. George Whitesides (D-CA) asked Pentagon officials, including Jules W. Hurst III, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, if they had Signal on their phones.

"I'm sorry, why is this relevant?" Hurst asked. ...

President Donald Trump was warned by military leaders that a war with Iran would risk seriously depleting U.S. weapons inventory — but went ahead with it anyway, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

One of the principal voices warning Trump about this was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported.

"General Caine — the man Mr. Trump liked to refer to as 'Razin’ Caine' — had impressed the president years earlier by telling him the Islamic State could be defeated far more quickly than others had projected," said the report. "Mr. Trump rewarded that confidence by elevating the general, who had been an Air Force fighter pilot, to be his top military adviser. General Caine was not a political loyalist, and he had serious concerns about a war with Iran. But he was very cautious in the way he presented his views to the president."...

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was angry about settling the Iran war.

Trump was taking press questions after swearing in new Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in the Oval Office when he gave a frank response about the status of the ongoing military conflict in the Middle East, which has now reached its fourth week and left 13 troops dead and 232 service members wounded.

This was the second time in two days that Trump had punted the blame to Hegseth over the war. On Monday, during a visit to Tennessee, Trump claimed that Hegseth urged him to pursue joint military strikes with Israel on Iran. ...

President Donald Trump has reportedly been furious with his "handpicked general" over delays to reopen the Strait of Hormuz amid the ongoing war with Iran, according to reports Monday.

Gen. Dan Caine was selected by Trump and the president apparently doesn't understand why the top military leader hasn't forced the oil route to reopen "despite Caine having repeatedly briefed him on the likely closure of the waterway ahead of the war," The Daily Beast reported.

Trump apparently pushed back on Caine and was in disbelief last week in an Oval Office meeting over why the reopening wasn't happening faster. ...