A factional purge in early April had already depleted Mr Waltz’s staff and left him weakened.
Mr Trump said Thursday he’ll nominate Mr Waltz to a consolation post as US Ambassador to the United Nations.
There’s plenty of work to be done there speaking for US interests, but that job means a loss of influence in White House debates.
The surface explanation is that Mr Waltz had to take the fall for accidentally adding a reporter to a Signal group chat on the Houthis.
But if so, why keep Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared details of US attack plans on the chat?
Without that blunder, Mr Waltz’s use of Signal to ask for his colleagues’ points of contact would have been a minor embarrassment.
Mr Waltz is also said to have clashed with chief of staff Susie Wiles.
But the deeper story may be that Mr Waltz and his deputies are out because they are “hawks,” a term for anyone who would continue the successful Iran, Russia and China policies of Mr Trump’s first term rather than default to Obama-style appeasement.
Mr Waltz was targeted from the start by the Tucker Carlson-Donald Trump Jr wing of the MAGA movement.
Laura Loomer, who has shifted from conspiracies about 9/11 to spreading blacklists in the Trump administration, previously helped to oust members of Mr Waltz’s staff with guilt-by-association tactics.
She tarred Alex Wong, Mr Waltz’s deputy and a former staffer for Senator Tom Cotton, as connected to the Chinese Communist Party.
Mr Wong is a noted China hawk – a tough-on-Beijing veteran of the first Trump term. Responding on Thursday to reports that Mr Wong will follow Mr Waltz out the door, Ms Loomer claimed another “SCALP” in a tweet.
The internal resistance to Mr Trump’s foreign policy comes not from Mr Waltz or “neocon warmongers” but from the come-home-America faction that includes Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The Signal chat revealed that Vice President JD Vance opposed and tried to delay the President’s decision to use force in defence of US ships under attack by Iran’s Houthi proxy.
Mr Waltz has been vilified for demanding that Iran dismantle its nuclear program or risk military means to do so.
But does the online MAGA brigade realise that’s the same policy that Messrs Trump, Hegseth and Rubio have elaborated many times?
Yes, they do. They want Messrs Hegseth’s and Rubio’s scalps as well, but really they want to overturn Mr Trump’s policy toward Iran, and they oppose a tougher line against Russia.
They see the Waltz firing as an opportunity to influence the President to embrace the Obama-Biden approach.
Accurately or not, they see an ally in Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s longtime pal and special envoy to the Middle East and Russia, to replace Mr Waltz at the NSC.
Mr Trump needs a replacement for Mr Waltz with national-security experience who can be an honest broker for his policy choices.
And it wouldn’t hurt to understand the axis of adversaries – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea – building against America.
The Wall St Journal
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Mike Waltz is out as President Trump’s national security adviser, and the race to replace him is on while Secretary of State Marco Rubio does double duty in the interim.