The confirmation hearing on Tuesday for Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, President Trump’s pick to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was strikingly uncontentious.
While the hearings for many other Trump nominees have been heated, General Caine’s was relatively smooth.
Democrats lodged their displeasure that Mr. Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown, his last Joint Chiefs chairman, but seemed to indicate they viewed General Caine as perhaps the best possible option, under the circumstances. Republicans praised him.
Here are key takeaways from the hearing.
General Caine will probably be confirmed.
General Caine appears to have enough support to be approved by the Armed Services Committee and confirmed by the Senate.
He will almost certainly outperform Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in votes for confirmation. Mr. Hegseth needed the intervention of Vice President JD Vance to cast the deciding vote, making him defense secretary by a one-vote margin.
Throughout General Caine’s hearing, Democrats appeared to be caught between a rock and a hard place. They wanted him to say plainly that he would push back against some of Mr. Hegseth’s initiatives targeting ethnic minorities, women and other groups. But they did not want to push so hard that they irreparably harmed his relationships with Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Trump before he even takes office.
“I expect you to pledge to always provide your best military advice to the president and the secretary of defense,” said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “Even if that advice is not what they would want to hear.”
Pete Hegseth’s Signal debacle was discussed.
Mr. Hegseth has insisted that he did nothing wrong by disclosing on a commercial messaging app when U.S. fighter jets would attack Houthi militia targets in Yemen.
The senators asked General Caine about that.
While he avoided criticizing the defense secretary directly, General Caine made clear, repeatedly, that attack plans do not belong on in group chats.
Asked if he would have objected to such a discussion had he been part of it, General Caine said, “We should always preserve the element of surprise.”
But eventually Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, asked him what he would have done if sensitive information was being shared in a chat that he was part of, as top administration officials did last month on Signal.
“I would weigh in and stop it,” he replied.
Unlike Hegseth, General Caine met with Democrats.
Before his hearing, Mr. Hegseth met with just one Democratic senator on the committee, Mr. Reed. A number of Democratic senators on the committee on Tuesday, by contrast, thanked General Caine for meeting with them.
“I appreciated the time we spent in my office talking about this role and the challenges that you will be facing,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, told him.
The general views Russia as an adversary.
General Caine made clear that he views Russia as one of America’s main adversaries, unlike Mr. Trump, who has sought to position the United States more in line with the Kremlin.
During his opening statement, General Caine gave a summation of the top four U.S. foes.
“It is 9:48 p.m. in Beijing, 6:48 p.m. in Tehran, 4:48 p.m. in Moscow, and 10:48 p.m. in Pyongyang,” he said. “As we sit here now, our nation faces an unprecedented rising global risk. Our adversaries are advancing.”
Democrats warned that history could repeat itself.
General Caine promised he would give the president and Mr. Hegseth his best military advice and pledged to “speak truth to power.”
Several Democrats reminded him what happened to his predecessors who did the same.
Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, brought up Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Mr. Trump’s first term and who has become the president’s public enemy No. 1.
“Here’s what happened to him,” Ms. Hirono said. “President Trump took away his security detail, his security clearance. He even took down his portrait in the Pentagon. That’s not all. General Milley is now under investigation by the department’s inspector general to see if he’ll be able to retire as a four-star general.”
“It’s always a challenge to stand up to this president,” she said.
