President Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser because the Floridian would be a “better UN ambassador,” Vice President JD Vance said Thursday — arguing that the former congressman’s nomination to rep the US in Turtle Bay could be considered a “promotion.”
“We brought Mike on to do some serious reforms of the National Security Council. He has done that,” Vance told Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier. “I like Mike. I think he’s a great guy. He’s got the trust of both me and the president, but we also thought that he’d make a better UN ambassador as we get beyond this stage of the reforms that we’ve made to the National Security Council.”
Vance told Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier that both he and Trump “like Mike” — but they “also thought that he’d make a better UN ambassador as we get beyond this stage of the reforms that we’ve made to the National Security Council.”
“I think you can make a good argument that it’s a promotion,” the veep added.
Trump announced earlier Thursday that he was nominating Waltz to be ambassador to the United Nations, which will require Senate confirmation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as interim national security adviser in the interim, while also functioning as America’s top diplomat.
“I think the media wants to frame this as a firing,” Vance said.
“Donald Trump has fired a lot of people. He doesn’t give them Senate-confirmed appointments afterwards. What he thinks is that Mike Waltz is going to better serve the administration, most importantly, the American people in that role.”
Those close to the White House were shocked to hear of Trump’s decision to shuffle his team, as many didn’t see Waltz losing his old job — let alone being picked as UN envoy.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R- NY) was first selected to be Trump’s UN ambassador, but was ultimately told to stay in Congress to boost the House GOP majority.
Waltz is the first major White House figure removed from the second Trump administration, lasting just 102 days as national security adviser.
The president publicly stood by Waltz after he mistakenly added Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat with administration members discussing military plans to strike the Houthis in Yemen — and sources told The Post they think Trump waited to move Waltz to show that he has the ultimate decision making power.
Vance, who was also in the Signal chat, expressed skepticism at the time about carrying out the strikes on the Houthis, complaining that the US was “bailing Europe out again.”
But the VP claimed to Baier Thursday that he was just discussing messaging techniques.
“If you go back to when those messages were leaked, what we were doing is having a private strategic conversation about how to message this to the American people,” Vance said.
“It’s always important to explain what you’re actually doing, how to ensure that some of the frankly, our allied countries that are under spending on their own defense, are actually carrying some of the burden. That was a concern that I raised about this particular operation, but I wasn’t overruled.”
