Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has begun requiring that nominees for four-star-general positions meet with President Trump before their nominations are finalized, in a departure from past practice, said three current and former U.S. officials.
The move, though within Mr. Trump’s remit as commander in chief, has raised worries about the possible politicization of the military’s top ranks by a president who has regularly flouted norms intended to insulate the military from partisan disputes.
The president has long had a fixation with the military. During his first term, Mr. Trump chose three military generals for top civilian roles in his administration; he repeatedly referred to the Pentagon’s military leaders as “my generals.”
Over the last four years, Mr. Trump has excoriated some former officers, such as the retired Gen. Mark A. Milley. After Mr. Trump chose General Milley to be his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he repeatedly accused him of disloyalty and later suggested that he had committed “treason” and that the punishment should be execution.
Last month, Mr. Trump delivered a highly partisan speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., ruthlessly attacking his political foes, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Trump’s broadsides drew both raucous laughter and boos from the uniformed military troops in attendance.
A White House spokeswoman dismissed concerns about partisanship as an element of the interviews.
“President Trump wants to ensure our military is the greatest and most lethal fighting force in history, which is why he meets with four-star-general nominees directly to ensure they are war fighters first — not bureaucrats,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman.
Recent presidents have elected to meet with some officers being considered for sensitive positions, such as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the four-stars leading the military services or combatant commanders overseeing U.S. troops in war zones, former officials said. But the officials said it could be impractical and unnecessary for the president to meet with nominees for all four-star openings. There are currently about three dozen four-star generals and admirals in the U.S. military.
“While these officers are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, they are not political appointees,” said the retired Col. Heidi Urben, a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Mr. Trump’s decision to interview most or all of them creates the impression that “they’re political appointees selected on the basis of their personal loyalty and partisan alignment.”
But some former U.S. officials and scholars who study civil-military relations said the meetings with Mr. Trump could help the senior officers better understand his goals for the military.
“If the president is meeting with the four-stars to share his vision for Golden Dome or other initiatives, that’s one thing,” said Peter Feaver, a professor at Duke University who served in the White House under President George W. Bush. “If he’s meeting with them to share his critiques of the Biden administration and see how they react, that would be problematic.”
Mr. Feaver said that Mr. Bush’s defense secretaries — Donald H. Rumsfeld and Robert M. Gates — would most likely have bristled at White House requests for blanket interviews of four-star nominees.
“We had two exceedingly strong secretaries who jealously guarded their prerogatives,” he noted. “They were not going to overly share with the White House if they didn’t have to.” The Pentagon declined to comment on the new approach to four-star nominations.
A former Fox News host and Iraq war veteran, Mr. Hegseth came to the Pentagon job with little government experience and has suffered through some significant miscues in his first six months in office. His inner circle of advisers has been plagued by infighting. Several have resigned or been fired.
Mr. Hegseth is also still contending with a review by the Pentagon’s inspector general related to his disclosure on the Signal messaging app of the precise timing of U.S. fighter jets’ airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen in March.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, disparaged that review as “a political witch hunt by Biden administration holdovers.” Mr. Hegseth provided a statement to the inspector general, he said, “which points out why this entire exercise is a sham, conducted in bad faith and with extreme bias.”
Despite his rocky spring, Mr. Hegseth remains in good standing with the president, according to two people with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s thinking, partly because of the B-2 bunker-buster operation against three nuclear sites in Iran.
Some Pentagon officials said the requirement that four-star nominees meet with Mr. Trump, initiated at Mr. Hegseth’s request, had slowed down the promotion process because it is often difficult to find time in the president’s busy schedule.
But the new policy also carries upsides for Mr. Hegseth. Because he has young children, Mr. Hegseth has less time to socialize with Mr. Trump at the White House or his clubs, an official said. The four-star meetings, which Mr. Hegseth attends, provide him valuable face time with the president.
If Mr. Trump becomes dissatisfied or angry with one of the nominees, the interviews could help insulate Mr. Hegseth from the blame.
“The president has a right to military leaders he trusts and has confidence in,” said Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute who was a national security aide to Mr. Bush.
Ms. Schake noted that Mr. Trump was not the first president to probe senior military leaders for their political leanings, even as she sounded a cautionary note: “Politics is a poor way to select military leaders.”
Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military.
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.
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