“Should I fire him?” Within Trump’s resolutions on Michael Waltz’s fate

For most of this week, President Trump was consumed by a single question. What should do for his national security councilor, Michael Waltz?

“Should I fire him?” He asked the helpers and allies while the repercussions continued for the extraordinary loss of a signal group chat established by Mr. Waltz, who had inadvertently added a journalist to the thread on a next military strike in Yemen.

In public, the default position of Mr. Trump was to defend Waltz and attack the media. Tuesday, the day after Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic broke the story of being included in the chat, the president said that Mr. Waltz was a “good man” for whom he had nothing to apologize.

But behind the scenes, Mr. Trump asked the people inside and outside the administration what they thought they were doing.

He told the allies that he was not satisfied with the cover of the press, but that he did not want to be seen as a ride for a media swarm, according to several people informed about his comments. And he said he was reluctant to fire people in the senior ranks so early in his second term.

But for Mr. Trump, the real problem did not seem to be the inattention of his director for national security to discuss military plans on a commercial app, people said. It was that Mr. Waltz may have had a sort of connection with Mr. Goldberg, a journalist from Washington that Mr. Trump detest. The president expressed displeasure for the way Mr. Waltz had the number of Mr. Goldberg on his phone.

On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump met vice -president JD Vance; the head of the staff of the White House, Susie Wiles; the head of the staff of the White House, Sergio Gor; His envoy of the Middle East, Steve Witkoff and others on the opportunity to stay with Mr. Waltz.

Last Thursday, while the controversy turbinated, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Waltz to the Oval Office. The next morning, the president reported to the people around him who was willing to remain with Mr. Waltz, three people said with knowledge of the president’s thought.

The people close to Mr. Trump claim that Mr. Waltz was able to cling in part because some in the administration still support him, and because Mr. Trump wanted to avoid comparisons with the chaotic staff of his first term, which he had The highest turnover of the best helpers of any presidential administration in modern history.

And while Mr. Trump can always change his mind, the episode shows the will of Mr. Trump to ignore external pressures in his second term, while taking him struggling with the limits of Loyalty test Has imposed to the staff throughout the administration.

Even before the loss of the signal, Waltz was on a shaky base, seen as too failed by some of the president’s advisers and too eager to support military action against Iran when the president himself clarified that he prefers to make an agreement.

An association with Mr. Goldberg, however confused, gave Mr. Waltz’s opponents more fuel to feed skepticism.

Some of the closest allies of Trump wondered if Mr. Waltz, a former official of the administration of George W. Bush, was compatible with the president’s foreign policy. Mr. Waltz had obtained Crosswise with Mr. Vance and Mrs. Wiles in political discussions, in particular as regards Iran, according to several people informed about the matter.

In a statement, the press secretary of the White House, Karoline Leavitt, said that Trump has a team whose members discuss each other but know that it is the “maximum decision maker”. “When he makes a decision, everyone holds in the same direction to be performed,” he added.

Weeks ago, a discussion occurred between some assistants that Mr. Waltz was ideologically aligned with the president. Mr. Trump, who has sometimes been effusive in private for Mr. Waltz, clarified that he did not want to start the cycle of layoffs so soon in his second administration, according to two people informed about the conversation. Trump, who repentantly pushed his first national security councilor, Michael T. Flynn, after less than a month in 2017, believed that he would have a narrative that generates chaos.

After the signal thread has trapped, someone shared a snippet of a 2016 video by Mr. Waltz on X, produced by a group funded mainly by the billionaire Koch Brothers. Speaking like a military veteran, Mr. Waltz looked directly in the camera as he condemned Mr. Trump like a Dodger and said: “Trump stopped now”. That fragment attracted attention from the critics of Mr. Waltz.

On the contrary, the work of the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be safe, even if he shared detailed information on strike times for the attack on the Houthi militants in Yemen in the signal wire. Maga Stalwarts like Charlie Kirk defended him online.

Mr. Hegseth “had nothing to do with this,” said the president on Wednesday.

Mr. Hegseth survived a bruised confirmation process in the Senate after being made fun of with the help of Mr. Vance and has a solid relationship with Mr. Trump.

While Mr. Waltz can maintain his work, the controversy reminded of Mr. Trump’s helpers that the president’s strategy for the management of crises – doubling and denying, no matter how problematic the facts are – does not seem to work as well as as they have been as well as over the years for Mr. Trump.

When the history of the Atlantic broke down, Mr. Waltz denied the meeting, knowing or communicating with Mr. Goldberg. But this statement was quickly questioned by photos that emerged from a 2021 Event in the French Embassy in Washington, where Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Waltz were depicted next to each other. The allies of Mr. Waltz rejected the idea that the photo suggested that the two men knew each other.

But the reality is that while Mr. Trump has requested loyalty to his staff, some high officials are the hands of long -standing Washington who have relationships, past experiences and contacts with people that Mr. Trump despises.

“I would say that the principle of obtaining a group of men yes and so that the women around him is the guiding principle, a basis of which he does not have, or renounces any past that could be a test on the contrary,” said John R. Bolton, who worked as third of four national security councilors of Mr. Trump and then wrote a revealing book on his time to the White House.

“Anyone who has been around Washington 10 years old, 15 years old, has all types of backgrounds,” said Bolton.

On Friday in Greenland, Mr. Vance, who was traveling with Mr. Waltz during a visit to try to put pressure on the United States to take the territory, clarified that Mr. Waltz was guilty for adding Mr. Goldberg to the signal thread.

But Mr. Vance, who was also in group chat and defended Mr. Waltz internally in the past, has made it again. It was a sign that Mr. Trump was ready to go on, for now.

“If you plan to force the President of the United States to fire anyone, you have another thinking thought,” he said. “President Trump said it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I am the vice -president who says it here on Friday, we are standing behind our entire national security team.”