By Kanishka Singh and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he plans to remove over 1,000 of former President Joe Biden's appointees from their government positions, and that he had "fired" four individuals immediately, including celebrity chef Jose Andres and former top general Mark Milley.
"YOU'RE FIRED!", Trump wrote in an early morning post on his Truth Social platform that named Milley, Andres, his former Iran envoy Brian Hook and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who Biden appointed to an export council.
Andres and Bottoms said they had already quit their posts before Trump's inauguration.
Trump's post said his personnel office "is actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand Presidential Appointees from the previous Administration, who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again."
Andres said on social media that he resigned last week from the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, and that his two-year term was already over. The Spanish-born chef's World Central Kitchen food aid program feeds people impacted by disasters.
Bottoms said on Instagram that she submitted her resignation on Jan. 4 and it went into effect Jan. 20. "You can’t fire someone who has already resigned," Bottoms wrote.
The planned firings are part of Trump's first salvoes to gut the federal bureaucracy during his second term in office. Trump has vowed to dismantle what he calls the "deep state" by purging civil servants who do not hew to his agenda, and aims to strip job protections from 50,000 federal employees.
Andres in a post on X urged Trump "to put politics and name calling aside…and instead lift up the everyday people working to bring America together."
Trump, in his social media post overnight, also said he was dismissing Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council.
Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was grateful for a preemptive pardon by Biden on Monday. Trump had once suggested Milley should be executed for holding back-channel talks with China. Milley's photo was removed from the Pentagon shortly after Trump was sworn into office.
Representatives for Milley could not be immediately reached for comment.
Trump also said he was removing former diplomat Hook from the Wilson Center for Scholars, a think tank. Neither Hook nor Lance Bottoms immediately responded to requests for comment.
Hook was appointed by Trump - not Biden - during his first term to the board of the Wilson Center. The center had no comment.
Trump's administration has fired U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Lee Fagan, the first female uniformed leader of an Armed Forces branch, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
The head of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration David Pekoske, first appointed by Trump during his first White House term in 2017, was also forced out on Monday.
His officials have asked more than one dozen senior career diplomats to step down. Four top officials from an agency that operates U.S. immigration courts were also removed.
On Monday, Trump ordered federal workers to return to the office five days a week and weakened job protections for civil servants.
Trump's allies have said the return-to-work mandate and the stripping of civil service protections, known as "Schedule F," will hold the federal bureaucracy accountable.