Trump shakes up National Security team

Trump shakes up national security team: Waltz tapped for UN post

WASHINGTON − Mike Waltz is out as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser and is instead his new nominee for ambassador to the United Nations in a major shake-up of Trump’s national security team.

Trump said on May 1 that Waltz was leaving his White House post, confirming a departure that was reported hours earlier amid the continued fallout after Waltz invited a journalist into a messaging chat in which top national security officials discussed plans for Yemen airstrikes.

But in a surprise move, the president said he wants Waltz to continue in his administration as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

“From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Trump said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would serve as national security adviser on an interim basis while he continues to lead the State Department.

Trump previously picked U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-New York, for the UN ambassadorship, but she withdrew her nomination when a series of special elections jeopardized Republicans’ slim majority in the House. The position requires Senate confirmation.

“I’m deeply honored to continue my service to President Trump and our great nation,” Waltz said in a statement.

Trump did not respond to shouted questions from reporters about Waltz as he boarded Marine One on his way to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where’s he’s speaking to graduates of the University of Alabama.

Earlier on May 1, a source familiar with Waltz’s ouster as national security adviser confirmed his departure, along with that of deputy national security adviser Alex Wong. Even though Waltz may be retained if confirmed for the ambassadorship, the departures of Waltz and Wong mark the first major staff shake-up since Trump returned to the White House in January.

Trump’s decision to move Waltz to the U.N. role ‒ and name Rubio the temporary national security adviser ‒ caught even Trump officials off guard.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce was alerted to the personnel shuffle by reporters during a press briefing when Trump announced the moves.

“Well, there you go ‒ fabulous,” Bruce told reporters. “It is clear I just heard this from you.”

Trump publicly stood by Waltz after his national security adviser and other members of the chat vigorously denied they’d shared classified war plans on the publicly available app Signal. The chat was revealed when Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, published a story on March 24 detailing how Waltz had accidentally invited him into the communications.

Yet behind the scenes, the embarrassing mishap, which even Trump started referring to as “Signalgate,” took a toll on the relationship between Trump and Waltz, a former Republican congressman from Florida.

Vice President JD Vance said May 1 in a Fox News interview that the Signal controversy didn’t play a role in Trump’s decision to shift Waltz to a different position. He said Trump still trusts Waltz, and that in moving him to a Senate-confirmed job “you could make a good argument” the president is promoting him.

“He has my complete trust and I know the president really likes Mike Waltz, he just thought that the UN ambassador position would be a better place for Mike Waltz to be,” Vance said.

Tapping Rubio as interim national security adviser adds to the multiple hats the former Florida U.S. senator wears in the Trump administration. Rubio is also serving as acting administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, after Trump gutted the agency, as well as acting archivist of the United States.

Waltz’s departure just 102 days into Trump’s second term marks the first high-ranking administration official to leave a post since the president’s inauguration. Yet Waltz lasted longer in his role than Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, whom Trump fired in February 2017, 24 days into his first term.

The reshuffling came after conservative podcast host and influencer Laura Loomer exerted increasing sway on Trump’s decision-making, encouraging Trump to fire two senior officials on the National Security Council after a White House visit.

Loomer, on a podcast hosted by reporter Tara Palmeri, recounted a recent Oval Office visit with Trump, saying she was prepared to show the president footage from his 2016 campaign of Waltz criticizing him for remarks he made about U.S. service members.

“I was about to show this video of Michael Waltz, and then President Trump walked into the Oval Office,” Loomer said, adding that she had kept it on her phone for “many years.”

On the day of the initial Atlantic report revealing the Signal chat, Waltz said he took “full responsibility” for the “embarrassing” blunder. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he told Laura Ingraham on Fox News.

Waltz mistakenly added Goldberg, a longtime national security journalist, to a Signal chat on the encrypted messaging app in mid-March that included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, and Vice President JD Vance, among other members of the Trump administration’s top echelon.

Officials in the group discussed military plans to strike the Houthi militant movement in Yemen, and Hegseth sent a message detailing strike times by U.S. warplanes and drones, as Goldberg reported in the bombshell article.

Trump defended Waltz at the start of the controversy, saying that it was a “mistake” and that “he’s not getting fired.” But fallout from the incident grew as lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees grilled Trump’s intelligence officials, and after reports of an additional Signal chat created by Hegseth in which the defense secretary shared sensitive military information with his wife and brother.

As Hegseth repeatedly denied accusations that he had shared any classified war plans, The Atlantic published screenshots of messages Hegseth sent in the chat that detailed the exact times of planned strikes and how they would be delivered.

Waltz was also defiant for weeks before news of his departure. “No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS,” he posted on X in March.

A former member of the Army’s Green Berets, Waltz served three terms representing the sixth congressional district in north-central Florida. He was replaced in Congress by Republican Randy Fine, who won a special election in March.

Waltz was initially elected to the House in 2018, replacing Ron DeSantis after his rise to Florida governor. An officer in the Army National Guard, Waltz had served in combat zones multiple times. He had been a defense policy director in the Pentagon before being tapped by Vice President Dick Cheney as a counterterrorism adviser in the George W. Bush administration. Waltz retired from the National Guard last fall at the rank of colonel.