President Donald Trump will replace Michael Waltz as his national security adviser the Daily Mail confirmed.
The recent dismissal of Waltz happened because he accidentally included a journalist in a confidential Signal group chat discussing plans to bomb the Houthis in Yemen.
The mistake quickly devolved into the administration’s greatest scandal to-date as Trump grappled with negative press fallout.
A source told the Daily Mail that Waltz’s departure is expected and Trump will likely announce it very soon.
According to journalist Mark Halperin on his show 2Way YouTube show, there was discontent within the national security sector towards Waltz and Deputy Adviser Wong for breaching security protocols.
‘This has to do about competence, not ideology,’ he said.
Halperin specified that the timing was uncertain, noting that the president had not settled on a replacement.
‘I do believe he has made up his mind, but he could change his mind,’ he said.
US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz at the White House
National Security Adviser Michael Waltz looks at his phone as he prepares for a TV interview at the White House
Waltz participated in a Cabinet meeting hosted by Trump on Wednesday, one day before his ouster
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to comment on the details of the report.
‘We are not going to respond to reporting from anonymous sources,’ she told the Daily Mail.
A spokesperson for the White House National Security council did not respond to a Daily Mail request for comment.
Waltz appeared in an interview on Fox and Friends Thursday morning, giving no indication that he was about to lose his job.
Waltz was proud of finalizing a deal with Ukraine for rare minerals, claiming it would benefit both the American taxpayer and aid Ukraine in economic and security growth.
Waltz also participated in a Cabinet meeting hosted by Trump on Wednesday, one day before his ouster.
There are reports that Trump’s trusted envoy and friend Steve Witkoff could be next in line to replace Waltz in the top Cabinet role.
The center of ‘Signalgate,’ Waltz struggled mightily to keep his job despite being responsible for mistakenly adding Atlantic editor Jeffery Goldberg to a Signal chat with with 17 high raking officials about military strikes in Yemen.
Goldberg published the digital messages in full at The Atlantic, ginning up weeks of negative news coverage of the administration and calling into question Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s leadership.
U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz (L) listens during a Cabinet meeting at the White House
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz speaks during a television interview at the White House,
Trump did not fire Waltz at the time, partially because he did not want to give Goldberg the satisfaction.
But Waltz’s public humiliation from the scandal especially after his embarrassing Fox News interview where he tried to to explain the mistake damaged his reputation in the West Wing.
Waltz took responsibility for the mistake, but struggled to explain how Goldberg’s number was in his phone to begin with, even as he stressed that he had never spoken to him before.
‘Well, if you have somebody else’s contact and then it, and then somehow it gets sucked in,’ he said to Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
Trump gave Waltz as less than enthusiastic endorsement in an interview with The Atlantic last week.
‘Waltz is fine. I mean, he’s here. He just left this office,’ Trump said. ‘He’s fine. He was beat up also.’
