By Josh Dawsey, Alexander Ward and Meridith McGraw
WASHINGTON—President Trump is replacing national security adviser Mike Waltz roughly a month after he put a journalist on a group text chat in which advisers discussed a sensitive military operation, according to people familiar with the matter, making him the first top official to lose his job in Trump’s second term.
Waltz lost favor with the president and senior advisers after the Atlantic revealed that he added a journalist to a chat on the nongovernment messaging app Signal, a crisis that dominated headlines and became one of the first major embarrassments for the administration. Trump declined to fire Waltz immediately, but privately expressed his frustration with Waltz.
Trump and senior administration officials, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, had been frustrated with Waltz even before the Signal debacle. Waltz hired aides that his critics said didn’t appeal to Trump’s MAGA base and struggled to relay the president’s national-security priorities on television—once seen as the former Florida congressman’s strength, according to administration officials. He also was sometimes ideologically out of step with Trump, pushing more traditionally hawkish views on Ukraine and Iran, and clashed with other White House officials, people close to Trump said.
Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, is also being ousted, the people said. The former aide to Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and senior negotiator during Trump’s first-term nuclear diplomacy with North Korea was seen by the president’s allies as a Waltz loyalist. Wong had been attacked by outside Trump allies, who asserted without evidence that he was pro-China. Other National Security Council staffers Waltz hired are also likely to lose their jobs, the people said.
Waltz was planning to travel to Michigan on Tuesday for the president’s rally marking the first 100 days in office. But Trump told him not to attend, according to administration officials.
Senior U.S. officials said Waltz had been marginalized during debates on key decisions, namely starting talks with Iran over its nuclear work and brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to both of those negotiations, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio proved more influential in those deliberations, the officials said, noting that Rubio had recently been spending much of his time at the White House.
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