Waltz out as national security adviser and tapped for UN ambassador

CNN

By Kaitlan Collins, Alayna Treene, Kevin Liptak, Jeff Zeleny, Kristen Holmes, Zachary Cohen and Alex Marquardt, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would nominate national security adviser Mike Waltz to serve as UN ambassador, after widespread reports that Trump planned to oust him, in the first major staff shakeup since the president took office in January.

The president said Secretary of State Marco Rubio would replace Waltz in the prior role on an interim basis.

“Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “In the interim, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as National Security Advisor, while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department.”

Trump informed Waltz that he was removing him from his role as national security adviser and nominating him as UN ambassador Thursday morning, a White House official told CNN.

“I’m deeply honored to continue my service to President Trump and our great nation,” Waltz wrote on X after Trump’s announcement.

Waltz’s job has been in limbo after it was made clear to him earlier this week that his time leading the National Security Council had come to an end, according to a source familiar with the matter. Alex Wong, the deputy national security adviser, and other national security advisers are expected to depart their roles as well, per multiple sources familiar with conversations, though timing is unclear.

Rubio now fills four roles within the administration: secretary of state, national security adviser, national archivist and acting administrator for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Waltz is heading to a potentially contentious confirmation fight in the Senate. Multiple people close to Trump said the president does not view the UN ambassador role as a high priority. That’s in part why he never intervened early on to speed along the nomination of his first pick, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. Trump also did not move quickly to pick a new person for the role, after Republicans’ narrow House majority forced Stefanik to remain in Congress.

Waltz had been on shaky ground within the administration – having lost most of his influence in the West Wing – after he inadvertently added a journalist to a messaging app group chat about highly sensitive military strikes.

Trump had considered firing him after the incident, but declined to do so because he didn’t want to provide his enemies a perceived victory, and he hoped to avoid the type of chaos that colored his first administration.

But while Trump stood by him at the time, Waltz’s standing hadn’t ever really recovered, according to four sources, and he lost clout with top aides inside the West Wing. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has privately been one of the officials most unimpressed with Waltz — even before the Signal fiasco.

At 100 days into his second term, Trump no longer appears as concerned about the appearance of disorder.

Waltz’s influence internally had been waning for weeks, illustrated best by Trump’s decision to dismiss several staffers from the National Security Council at the urging of far-right activist Laura Loomer, who told him they were disloyal. Loomer told CNN Thursday she had previously tried to raise concerns about Waltz directly with Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office, where Loomer was urging the removal of certain national security officials. She said she planned to show Trump a 2016 campaign ad in which Waltz criticized him, but before she could play the clip on her phone, Waltz entered the room.

Loomer said she had also targeted Wong, citing his past work for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

Mark Halperin first reported the news of Waltz being pushed out.

Trump’s thinking on Hegseth

Before Trump announced his new plans for Waltz, Democrats on Capitol Hill largely reacted to news of his ouster by saying Trump was going after the wrong national security official. They believed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deserved the boot more after he discussed bomb targets in Yemen in the Signal chat.

“I think they’re holding the wrong guy accountable,” Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly said, adding that he thought Waltz accidentally including a journalist on the Signal chat was an “unfortunate mistake” but that he found it most troubling that Hegseth shared “incredibly sensitive information about a strike off of an aircraft carrier, putting pilots at risk.”

But Trump’s thinking on Hegseth has sharply differed from how he regarded Waltz after the Signal episode, according to people familiar with the matter. The president was never able to move beyond the question of how Waltz invited Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic into the group chat in the first place, people familiar with the matter say.

While Trump did not think Hegseth exercised good judgment in sharing the Yemen war plan in at least two group chats, according to the people familiar, he believed his Defense secretary should not be dismissed after the administration spent so much political capital to confirm him.

Hegseth also has more far support outside the administration through the Trump-inspired MAGA movement than Waltz, who was viewed with deep suspicion among the base. Plus, unlike Hegseth, replacing Waltz does not involve a Senate confirmation fight.

Still, Hegseth has faced internal scrutiny. Wiles has ordered Hegseth and the Pentagon to step up their performance, offering an admonition weeks ago that there is “no room for more mistakes or embarrassments.”

But behind the scenes, some administration officials had begun quietly discussing an off-ramp for Waltz over the last several days. Trump has expressed frustration with him on multiple fronts, including the Signal episode. He was also irritated the Florida congressional race to replace Waltz was closer than expected, two sources familiar with the conversations told CNN.

“President Trump lost confidence in him a while ago,” one source said.

Waltz boarded Marine One with Trump on Tuesday, but when his colleagues boarded Air Force One about 10 minutes later, he instead remained on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. One White House official said he was never slated to travel with the president to Michigan, but the move was viewed as odd by other aides inside the administration.

Asked about the impact of Waltz’s dismissal as national security adviser, before Rubio was named as a replacement, multiple foreign officials — including some from the Middle East — expressed apprehension about who would fill the role.

“Of all of them, we never thought he would be the first [to be fired],” said a senior western official.

This story has been updated with additional details.

Manu Raju and Steve Contorno contributed to this report.

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