President Trump announced on Thursday that he is removing his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and nominated him as ambassador to the United Nations and installed as his interim replacement Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will remain the nation’s top diplomat.
It is the first significant personnel overhaul of top White House aides, and the kind of shake-up that Mr. Trump has sought to avoid in his second term.
“From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on social media. “I know he will do the same in his new role. In the interim, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as National Security Advisor, while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department.”
Mr. Waltz had been on thin ice as national security adviser for months, but his position became more precarious after it became public that he organized a group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss a sensitive military operation in Yemen and accidentally included a journalist.
Most of Mr. Trump’s advisers had already viewed him as too hawkish to work for a president who campaigned as a skeptic of American intervention and eager to reach a nuclear deal with Iran and normalize relations with Russia.
Mr. Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, who worked on North Korea issues in Mr. Trump’s first term and who is considered a moderate Republican with substantial national security experience, is also expected to be removed, according to a senior administration official with knowledge of the situation. The official and others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions.
Mr. Rubio will now hold both positions, something that no other official has done simultaneously since Henry Kissinger held both titles under the Nixon and Ford administrations. One person with knowledge of the discussions said Mr. Rubio had indicated some time ago that he would be willing to serve for roughly six months if Mr. Waltz was being replaced and Mr. Rubio was asked.
The Kissinger experiment has not been considered a success by most historians, because the national security adviser is supposed to help adjudicate among competing arguments inside a national security establishment, and thus must often resolve differences among the State Department, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, among others. Mr. Kissinger was ultimately removed from post of national security adviser, and replaced with Brent Scowcroft.
But Mr. Trump is not running a second administration that has much of a true historical parallel.
Mr. Rubio ran against Mr. Trump in 2016, but they have developed a close working relationship in recent months, according to several top administration officials. Mr. Waltz is being provided a soft landing and praise as he departs the current role, while filling a spot left open when Mr. Trump abruptly pulled his nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican from New York.
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
Jonathan Swan is a White House reporter for The Times, covering the administration of Donald J. Trump.
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