President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Waltz, and his deputy are stepping down, according to a report on CBS News, a stunning fall for one of Trump’s top aides.
CBS said Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, will be leaving their posts. The report cited several people familiar with the matter. Politico reported that Waltz could be replaced by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s longtime friend who has served as the White House envoy for talks on both Iran’s nuclear program and a Ukraine peace deal.
“We are not going to respond to reporting from anonymous sources,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.
Waltz had come under fire in the weeks since he acknowledged inadvertently adding Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat group set up to discuss pending attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Waltz included Goldberg in the text thread days before the attack. The text group, which also included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others, discussed details of plans for strikes on Iran-backed Houthi rebels who have staged numerous attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
Trump later offered a tepid defense of Waltz in an interview with Goldberg and other reporters with the Atlantic.
“Waltz is fine,” Trump said. “I mean, he’s here. He just left this office. He’s fine. He was beat up also.”
Waltz joined the Trump administration after serving six years in Congress, representing a district in Florida. He’s a former Army Green Beret who served multiple tours in Afghanistan. As national security advisor he was responsible for coordinating foreign policy within the West Wing and briefing the president on global crises.
Trump cycled through four national security advisors in his first term. His first national security advisor, retired General Michael Flynn, resigned after less than one month on the job after revelations that he misled then Vice President Mike Pence about his communications with Russia’s ambassador to the US.
