After weeks of speculation about his future within the Trump administration, national security adviser Mike Waltz is on his way out of his current job, although the president made it clear he’s not completely jettisoning the embattled official in his first major Cabinet shakeup.
Mr. Waltz had come under scrutiny for accidentally adding a journalist to a Signal chat group that shared highly sensitive details of a planned U.S. military strike on Yemen. Later, it was revealed that he had also used a personal Gmail account for government communications.
President Donald Trump has tapped Mr. Waltz to be the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a move that will expose him to congressional questions about the Signal leaks during the confirmation process, analysts say. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will temporarily serve as national security adviser until a replacement is named.
Why We Wrote This
President Trump’s first major shakeup of top administration officials in his second term signaled his interest honoring loyalty, even as he removed an embattled official from a key national security position.
After initial reports that he was about to be fired, news of Mr. Waltz’s new job – via the president’s Truth Social account – appeared to take some members of his administration by surprise. Asked by a reporter at a press conference how long Mr. Rubio might fill the position, a State Department spokesperson said, “I just heard this from you.”
In addition to the leaked chats, the president has reportedly been questioning Mr. Waltz’s hawkish foreign policy stance. The U.N., not a priority for Mr. Trump, is a safe place to put a loyal adviser.
Additional cabinet departures may be coming soon, now that President Donald Trump has passed the 100-day mark in his second administration.
In particular, Mr. Waltz’s ouster raises renewed questions about the future of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has already been the focus of a number of controversies.
Secretary Hegseth’s reported decision to move “operational details that we would hold highly classified,” as one senior defense official described it, from a secure military network to a more hackable chat group – in advance of a military strike, putting U.S. troops at risk – was more egregious in the eyes of many security experts. He has also come under fire for communicating sensitive information in Signal chats that included his wife and brother.
When the Signal chats first came to light March 24, Mr. Waltz said it was an “embarrassing” mistake and wondered how a journalist got “sucked into this group.” He suggested it could be part of a “conspiracy” and called Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor-in-chief who had been included in the chat, “scum” for writing about it.
President Trump said at the time that he wouldn’t fire Mr. Waltz. He’s “learned a lesson,” the president added, calling him “a good man.”
The fact that Mr. Waltz held onto his job for as long as he did – and Secretary Hegseth remains in his post for now – reflects the high priority Mr. Trump places on loyalty, analysts say. The president also doesn’t like handing wins to his critics.
Still, Mr. Trump has historically not hesitated to fire advisers when they become a political liability. Though Mr. Waltz’s tenure was brief it was longer than that of Michael Flynn, a retired U.S. general who served as Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser in 2017 for just 22 days.
Mr. Flynn was forced out over revelations that he’d discussed lifting U.S. sanctions on Moscow with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. before Mr. Trump took office.
After pleading guilty to lying about this incident to the FBI, Mr. Flynn was pardoned by Mr. Trump in November, 2020.
For weeks, the White House downplayed the significance of the Signal leaks, saying that no “classified” information was shared.
Administration officials made that same argument after it was discovered that Mr. Hegseth had created a second Signal chat group to share the same highly sensitive U.S. military details in advance of the Yemen strike with his wife and brother, the latter of whom Mr. Hegseth hired to work as his adviser at the Pentagon.
Yet among the rank and file, there had been a keen awareness of a double standard. In the words of one former enlisted airman, “We used to get in trouble for a lot less than that.”
With Mr. Waltz’s exit comes the question of who is likely to replace him. Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate developer who has known the president for decades and more recently was the point person on international crises from Gaza to Ukraine, has been mentioned as one possibility. Other names being floated include Ric Grenell, who served as Mr. Trump’s acting director of national intelligence in 2020.
