Trump’s National Security Adviser Forgot To Leave Personal Agenda at Home and Fell

The Washington Post reported that Mike Waltz was removed from office after he crossed the line by talking secretly to Benjamin Netanyahu about Iran. In addition, it seems he also aroused distrust among those loyal to the president because of his overall hawkishness. He reminded them too much of the previous generation of Republicans.

President Donald Trump, who again is taking pride in unhesitatingly firing recalcitrants has once again fired a rebellious aide. This happened on day 101 of his presidency at the end of last week. This time he fired National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

During his first term, Trump fired people beginning in his first month in office and continued until his last. He often did this tweeting, which is how he replaced his secretary of state, the attorney general, and the FBI director. People learned about the terminations over social media.

In this sense, Waltz’s suffered a better fate. He was allowed to continue and totter for almost two months after we learned that he shared military secrets over unprotected chat software and until he was demoted to the post of U.N. ambassador. Of course, it is an honor to be at the U.N.; the ambassador is even a cabinet-level position, but the national security advisor is the first one to see the president in the morning.

This issue was so pathetic that it almost peeled away the flashy veneer of Trump’s reinvigorated presidency. The president again demonstrated his capacity to fire, but he also took pride in his authority to choose his advisers.

Not Only Because of the Chat

In the opening months of his first term, chaos reigned in Trump’s White House. He sacked his first national security advisor within three weeks. Apparently, he did seek to avoid starting his second presidential term on the same discordant note. At first, he defended Waltz, a former member of Congress and a former combat officer. Trump said Waltz was “doing his best” with “equipment and technology that’s not perfect,” adding that Waltz is “probably” not going to be using that application again.“

The chat issue made a mockery of Waltz, but that was not his only problem. His inherent hawkishness on a series of foreign policy issues, particularly Russia and relations with NATO allies, concerned those guarding the embers of Trumpism who are terrified of overseas entanglements and hate Europe but are are fond of Vladimir Putin.

The Washington Post further reported the odds were stacked against Waltz after his conversation with the Israeli prime minister about attacking Iran ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with Trump in early February, citing two unnamed sources.

If in fact this happened, it occurred before the chat issue exploded. Why, then, did it take three months before Waltz was fired? It’s not clear. The Washington Post appeared to sensationalize the issue. News reports in Israel went even further, likening Waltz’s sudden demise into that of his Israeli counterpart Ron Dermer, who became persona non grata in the Trump administration. It is not unlikely that the reporters were seeing things as they wanted or at least exaggerating.

The Temptation and the Vision

It is reasonable that Waltz did something that presidential senior advisers are tempted to do from time to time: They forget they are there to execute president’s vision, not their own. This is particularly tempting when the president provides limited information on the issues he engages his advisers on.

Waltz has a long record of decisive support for Ukraine and Israel from his days in Congress. In this respect, his appointment to the position of national security advisor was surprising because Waltz is close to the Republican Party circle that Trump is bitter about and disdains, the hawks who led the United States into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Netanyahu and Dermer, in the span of a quarter century, were frequent guests of those Republican hawks, who had very little in common with the doves and isolationists.

Waltz’s successor, whoever he is, will not be an ideologue. He will be appointed for only one mission: to carry out the president’s bidding, and not to stray right or left. Steve Witkoff is the classic candidate. He knows very little about the complexities of the world, but a great deal about what Trump is like and what he desires.

Exiling Waltz to serve as U.N. ambassador leaves Israel without an important ally. However, this is a useful reminder that Israel has much less influence on Trump’s White House than it figured.

Trump’s Henry Kissinger?

The national security advisor’s duties have passed temporarily to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This is somewhat of a strange choice, but definitely less strange than appointing Witkoff. Rubio acquired foreign affairs expertise during his long years of service in the Senate and on the Foreign Affairs Committee. The question is how to pair the demanding duties of secretary of state with those of national security advisor.

Over the past 75 years, the secretary of state’s role has become that of a super-diplomat, jumping from capital to capital. Secretaries of state were traditionally accustomed to sitting in Washington near the president. There was no objective reason to have a separate adviser.

The national security advisor became more prominent in the 1960s during the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War. Henry Kissinger lent star power to the position when he was appointed by President Richard Nixon in 1969. Nixon despised the State Department and made up his mind to conduct foreign policy himself.

Kissinger made it worse; he was erudite, a political and social acrobat, and in fact became the exporter and importer. He was put in charge of Nixon’s very daring initiatives: reconciliation with Communist China, which changed the course of history; and detente with the Soviet Union, which lowered the flames of the Cold War for many years. Later, following the Yom Kippur War, Kissinger deployed his famous shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, something that yielded the first separation of forces agreements with Egypt and Syria and paved the way for the Israeli-Egyptian peace.

Kissinger stepped on the toes of William Rogers, Nixon’s first secretary of state, and pushed him to the periphery of irrelevance. In the end, Nixon ended the farce and dismissed Rogers, moving the dual functions of the secretary of state and national security advisor to Kissinger. They remained in his hands for two years until Gerald Ford became president. Subsequently, Kissinger had to be content with serving as secretary of state.

Can Rubio be Trump’s Kissinger? Who knows. Rubio has undergone a major transformation in recent years, from Trump’s deadly competitor (he ran against Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries) to faithful minion, heaping exaggerated praise on the president. Rubio was once much closer to the hawkishness of Waltz than the isolationism of Trump. However, it appears he is having difficulty adapting himself to the circumstances.

Where does Rubio stand on Israel? He was always a very close friend. However, there are no such friends around Trump. Those who want to keep their jobs must compromise their personal agendas to the point of denying them. Everyone wants to be like Witkoff. He knows the ironclad rule of staying in office and progress: recognizing that one is a satellite in Trump’s solar system, not an equal player.