Waltz is losing support inside the White House

Despite Donald Trump’s public support, Mike Waltz has lost sway with the president and the backing of senior aides, with some circulating clips of him making previous critical comments of Trump.

Donald Trump speaks to reporters with (L to R, JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz in the White House. Picture: AFP.

President Trump has decided for now not to fire his national security adviser over the revelation that he included a journalist on a group text chat to discuss and execute a military strike, but the damage to Mike Waltz’s reputation has put him on shaky ground in the White House, senior US officials said.

Despite repeated messages of support by Trump, Waltz has lost sway with the president and the backing of senior aides within the White House, officials said, just as the administration struggles to broker peace deals and faces the threat of further war in the Middle East.

For Trump, the officials said, Waltz’s biggest sin wasn’t starting a Signal chat to co-ordinate strikes on the Houthis in Yemen, or even posting Israel-provided intelligence onto an unclassified network, it was having the Atlantic magazine’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s number in his phone and inadvertently adding him to the conversation.

Trump’s anger spilled over into many private discussions last week, including multiple calls with allies in which he unloaded expletives and blamed Waltz for the administration’s first big national security crisis. On Wednesday, Trump spoke to Vice President JD Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and personnel chief Sergio Gor about whether Waltz should be dismissed.

But on Thursday, Trump let Waltz know in a one-on-one meeting that the national security adviser would keep his job. Trump decided to give Waltz a reprieve during that discussion, two administration officials said. He didn’t want the media and Democrats to claim a scalp so early in his second administration, according to people close to Trump, as that would admit wrongdoing. One person said that if news of the Signal chat had first appeared in a conservative media outlet such as Breitbart, Waltz would be gone.

But the former George W. Bush administration official and US lawmaker from Florida is still navigating a minefield. Two US officials also said that Waltz has created and hosted multiple other sensitive national security conversations on Signal with cabinet members, including separate threads on how to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine as well as military operations. They declined to address if any classified information was posted in those chats.

Even before the most recent episode, Waltz had annoyed many of his colleagues by seeming imperious and expressing views that were out of line with Trump’s agenda, two administration officials said.

“Keeping Waltz is weak and betrays the base that elected President Trump,” Trump’s deputy communications director from his 2024 campaign, Caroline Sunshine, said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (L) and US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz (R) speak to reporters following meetings with a Ukrainian delegation in Jeddah. Picture: AFP.

Trump was also shown polling that Republicans could possibly lose Waltz’s seat in Florida, although Republican officials have expressed confidence in the race.

In response to the criticism, National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said “the chattering of unnamed sources should be treated with the scepticism of gossip from people lacking the integrity to attach their names.”

“Susie Wiles and the entire staff are firmly behind President Trump when he expressed his confidence in Mike Waltz and the entire national security team,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said.

In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said he didn’t “fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts.” Early last week, Hughes confirmed that the Signal chats were authentic.

Even as Trump seriously weighed cutting Waltz loose, aides said he was haunted by his first term firing of Mike Flynn, the retired Army lieutenant general who served as his first national security adviser. Flynn had come under pressure from the media and his own team after lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia, catalysing a narrative that the novice president led a chaotic and undisciplined administration.

Trump came to regret that decision and has vowed never to repeat it. Two months into his new term, he has bragged about the relative professionalism and efficacy of his current team, enjoying in particular the absence of news stories about careless mistakes.

Donald Trump listens to Mike Waltz (C) as he speaks from the Oval Office earlier in March. Picture: AFP.

But the Signal-chat debacle pierced Trump’s sense of flawless execution. Behind-the-scenes conversations were reminiscent of Trump’s first term, when power struggles within the White House spilled out into the press.

Trump’s anger at Waltz persists, even as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe also appeared to have posted classified information into the Signal thread.

Waltz’s ideological adversaries are pursuing an internal campaign to remind the president that Waltz wasn’t always aligned with him, by pointing out that Waltz opposed the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and Syria, supported America’s defence of Ukraine, and worked on national security legislation with then-Rep. Liz Cheney, a House Republican from Wyoming who opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Some administration officials also began circulating clips on Friday of Waltz making particularly critical comments of Trump in the past. One was a 2016 video of Waltz criticising Trump for not serving in the Vietnam War and urging voters to “stop Trump now.” “All this has reminded everybody of those facts,” said a senior administration official, “and those were things that were best conveniently forgotten.”

The Wall St Journal