Trump fires National Security Adviser in wake of Signalgate

Washington Michael Waltz, the National Security Adviser, will leave his post at the White House after mistakenly adding the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the Signal group where plans were shared to bomb Houthi targets. His adviser, Alex Wong, will also leave the White House, according to several US media reports, including the New York Times. De factoWaltz's departure also implies that the Trump administration is acknowledging the seriousness of the case after weeks of downplaying it. For show, however, the president is unwilling to admit his mistake. He instead gave Waltz a dignified exit as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as acting National Security Adviser, the Associated Press reports.

Both CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had denied before the Senate that the information sent via that Signal chat was classified. Waltz's dismissal now suggests otherwise.

Waltz had been under fire after Goldberg revealed that members of the presidential cabinet had been discussing critical military information on a commercial messaging app. In the Signal chat, which also included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, among others, detailed information on the fighter jets' flight hours and the weapons targeted was shared.

Implications of the Signal chat scandal

In the days following the scandal, Trump applied his usual tactic: attacking and denying the facts. The president closed ranks with his National Security Advisor and insisted that the information in the chat was not sensitive, much less classified. Although the president tried to downplay what could be a national security scandal in his first 100 days in office, criticism and concern about the military chat only grew within the White House. Several officials believed it was impossible for Waltz to survive the scandal. "Half of them don't think she can survive the scandal," explained one of the officials, who considered it completely "reckless" not to review the chat.

Trump initially fired several lower-level employees at the State Department and other committees, but kept Waltz on. Waltz's resignation comes amid The Pentagon's investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth In the wake of Signalgate, Hegseth was the one who shared the details of the military operation via the commercial chat. Furthermore, it has recently been discovered that he sent this same information in a second Signal chat that included his wife and brother, among others. In that second chat, Hegseth allegedly shared confidential information with people who are not part of the government or who had no direct relationship with the operation.

The Signalgate scandal has further fueled doubts about Hegseth's abilities to lead Defense that had been brewing among Pentagon officials since he took office. Aside from the Signal chats, Hegseth had been involved in other, less high-profile blunders that had already raised several eyebrows. One of the last members of the Secretary of Defense's team who recently left the Pentagon, John Ullyot, wrote an article in Political in which he accused Hegseth of being incompetent. "The building is in chaos under Hegseth's leadership," it said.