A report Wednesday by The New York Times has found that the Pentagon delayed the promotions of two female generals due to concerns about how then-president Donald Trump might react.

Apparently, last fall Mark Esper, then the secretary of defense, and Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had decided that Air Force Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost and Army Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson should be promoted, but they didn’t move forward with this right away because they were worried the women’s nominations would hit a White House-sized roadblock, Business Insider reports.

The NYT reported that “the two Pentagon leaders feared that any candidates other than white men for jobs mostly held by white men might run into turmoil.” There might have been other political factors as well.

Esper and Milley decided to hold off on the nominations until the Trump administration had left the building because they believed the Biden administration would be more welcoming and accept the nominations, especially since the two Pentagon leaders had a turbulent relationship with the Trump administration.

Esper, in fact, was fired right after the presidential election and in an interview with the NYT, he acknowledged that submitting the nominations was delayed specifically because of political concerns.

The reason Van Ovost and Richardson were expected to be nominated to lead Transportation Command and Southern Command is that “they were the best officers for the jobs, and I didn’t want their promotions derailed because someone in the Trump White House saw that I recommended them or thought DoD (Department of Defense) was playing politics,” Esper said.

“This was not the case. They were the best qualified,” he said. “We were doing the right thing.”

The situation between Trump, other members of his administration, and Milley and Esper was a bit sticky sometimes as feuds erupted.

Esper and Milley were opposed to Trump’s intentions to impose the Insurrection Act so that he could send in active-duty troops into cities to stop unrest as racial justice protests broke out. Both men have also said they regretted taking part in Trump’s photo opportunity after peaceful protesters were forcefully removed from a park. Milley has also said bases bearing the names of Confederate officers should be renamed.

No wonder they ran afoul of Trump, who was bent on imposing his will on the U.S. in the days leading up to the election.

And the two Pentagon leaders worried that if they submitted the nominations, the Trump administration would merely replace them with someone else. They’d already figured that if Trump won, they would submit the women’s names and cross their fingers.

So now, the good news is that the women’s nominations are expected to be sent to the White House within the next few weeks. It very much sounds like the women are definitely qualified for the jobs. Van Ovost oversees a four-star command as head of Air Force Mobility Command, and Richardson is the three-star commander of the Army branch of Northern Command. Now that a certain misogynistic president is out of office, their future looks rosier.