President Trump waited a few months longer than in his first term to dump his national security adviser, ousting Mike Waltz on Thursday as a casualty of Signalgate and for not meeting strict MAGA criteria.
Waltz took responsibility in March for organizing a group chat about a military operation in Yemen on the Signal app and accidentally including journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. But The New York Times reports Waltz was also considered too much of a traditional Republican by pushing for sanctions against Russia in its war with Ukraine.
The news prompted an immediate rebuke from Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader from New York, who said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should get the pink slip for sharing sensitive information in the chat.
“They’re firing the wrong guy,” Schumer told reporters, per The Times. “They should be firing Hegseth.”
Alex Wong, Waltz's deputy on the foreign policy team, is also expected to leave, The Times reported.
It's the first major shake-up in the ranks of Trump, who has been trying to avoid the chaos of his first term when he went through four national security advisers, The Associated Press reported. He ousted the first one, Michael Flynn, four weeks after his 2017 inauguration. Trump also had four White House chiefs of staff and two secretaries of state.
Far right-wing Trumpers like Laura Loomer got in Trump's ear this time, complaining that she had been left out of the vetting process for National Security Council aides and that Waltz and others were "not-MAGA-enough," per The Associated Press.
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