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- President Drops Waltz as Advisor in First Shake-up
President Drops Waltz as Advisor in First Shake-up
Pressure rose after group chat leak — Rubio will cover security role
Matt Davis
May 02, 2025
I had money on the timing of this announcement and suffice to say it was later than I’d bet. So thanks to my mate Joe who can keep the theoretical dollar I never paid him because an Englishman always welches on a gambling debt. Want to go double or quits on Pete Hegseth, Joe?
Two things: Mike Waltz quit a safe congressional seat to serve 100 days as national security adviser before being fired. Two: Trump now has the child of immigrants doing four people’s jobs. For the details let’s read the story, shall we?
President Trump on Thursday removed his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and nominated him as ambassador to the United Nations, the first significant personnel overhaul of top White House aides and the kind of shake-up that Mr. Trump had sought to avoid in his second term.
The New York Post tried to make out this wasn’t a firing yesterday. But all the other major news outlets led with the “you’re fired” line from The Apprentice, or close to it. Giving Waltz a job at the United Nations is like asking him to go clean out the shoe closet, given how much shrift Trump and his cronies pay to international diplomacy. On t’other hand Waltz had it coming ever since adding a journalist to a signal chat in which classified war plans were shared. Next up? Pete Hegseth. Right? Riiiiight?
The only reason Trump didn’t fire him earlier is:
His job was saved at the time in part because Mr. Trump, aides said, did not want to be seen as giving in to the news media by firing Mr. Waltz.
And that cost me a dollar! Here’s Mr. Trump relying increasingly on Marco Rubio, who he must really hate at this point for being so competent.
Mr. Rubio now has a lengthy list of job titles. He holds the position of secretary of state and national security adviser, something that no other official has done simultaneously since Henry Kissinger held both titles under the Nixon and Ford administrations. Mr. Rubio has also been serving as the acting head of both the gutted U.S.A.I.D. and the National Archives.
And here’s another nice detail:
Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokeswoman, learned of Mr. Rubio’s new role during a briefing with reporters, after Mr. Trump posted about it.
The rest of the story is inside baseball. Who was in the loop? Who was out of it? Etc. Waltz was also a hawk on Russia:
…which, as we all know, is not how Donald Trump likes to treat Russia.
As the story also makes clear, Trump had four national security advisers in his first term and would prefer to avoid the perception of chaos again. The trouble is that to keep staff around, you have to hire competent people in the first place, and the Venn diagram of competent people who would be seen dead working for Donald Trump is two circles a long way apart from each other.
Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to, and have a great weekend!
Say, is there a story that might cheer me up a bit?
Oh, sure. Read this piece 👇🏻 about the Tony nominations. I really do think George Clooney looks bad with that dye job, though, and that should count against him, surely?
Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.
Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”