Vice President JD Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and head of personnel Sergio Gor suggested to Donald Trump on Wednesday that he should fire National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, whose admittedly “embarrassing” inclusion of a journalist on a war-related Signal chat spawned immense, bipartisan criticism, Politico reported.
According to the outlet, which cited two people familiar with the conversations, Trump agreed that Waltz had made a mistake. He wouldn’t fire him, though, because he didn’t want to give his political opponents a “win.”
“They don’t want to give the press a scalp,” one White House ally said.
Yet Waltz could still end up leaving at some point down the road, the two individuals said, with one predicting: “They’ll stick by him for now, but he’ll be gone in a couple weeks.”
A spokesperson for Waltz was dismissive of the Politico report, telling the outlet that “the chattering of unnamed sources should be treated with the skepticism of gossip from people lacking the integrity to attach their names.”
“Mike Waltz serves at the pleasure of President Trump and the president has voiced his support for Mike,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes added. “The entire National Security leadership team has led a successful and effective counter-terrorism mission and that is what media and Democrats are trying to obscure.”
In the days following The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg describing how Waltz invited him to the group chat, in which detailed plans for strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen were mentioned, the administration has at times offered contradictory explanations.
Waltz denied that a staffer was responsible for Goldberg’s inclusion, while Trump said that, as far as he knew, a staffer was to blame.
Waltz also denied knowing Goldberg, though the two had met years before.
And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who provided the chat with information on the planned strikes, repeatedly continued to insist that “nobody was texting war plans” even after the White House confirmed the message chain’s authenticity.
