Michael Waltz Out as National Security Advisor

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : ("I think he's gonna get it together," Trump told my colleagues in an interview last week.
51% : Though he lacks diplomatic experience, he has been friends with Trump for years, and the president has sent him ricocheting around the globe -- with little to show for it so far.
49% : And, while Graham is certainly correct that Trump is sui generis in his vision of American foreign policy, a National Security Advisor who isn't seen as a team player can't survive, regardless of his expertise.
43% : The second is a behind-the-scenes coordinator who ensures that the principals, notably the Secretaries of State and Defense but also the intelligence community, are all playing from the same set of music, smoothing over differences out of the limelight.
42% : But on marquee issues that Trump can't ignore, and where tough trade-offs and complicated strategy enter the picture -- such as with Ukraine or China -- someone has to start giving him news he doesn't like.
42% : Witkoff, meanwhile, seems to have neither an ideology nor any expertise that might interfere with his fidelity to Trump.
38% : WSJ ("Trump to Oust National Security Adviser Mike Waltz"): President Trump is replacing national security adviser Mike Waltz roughly a month after he put a journalist on a group text chat in which advisers discussed a sensitive military operation, according to people familiar with the matter, making him the first top official to lose his job in Trump's second term.
38% : Trump is known to pivot away from plans he tells staff and even announces publicly.
34% : On an issue like the strikes on Houthis in Yemen, where Trump has fewer interests to balance, problems don't tend to arise.
30% : Trump doesn't want expertise.
28% : As I wrote in January, Trump doesn't care about national security.
27% : But Trump told him not to attend, according to administration officials.
21% : Waltz was one of the more respected and expert hands on Trump's team, and that would have doomed him sooner or later. Waltz's demise was foretold shortly after Signalgate, when the 9/11-conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who holds no government role, persuaded Trump to fire several NSC staffers whom she believed were insufficiently loyal.
11% : Trump and senior administration officials, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, had been frustrated with Waltz even before the Signal debacle.
10% : Trump declined to fire Waltz immediately, but privately expressed his frustration with Waltz.
10% : He also was sometimes ideologically out of step with Trump, pushing more traditionally hawkish views on Ukraine and Iran, and clashed with other White House officials, people close to Trump said. Waltz's deputy, Alex Wong, is also being ousted, the people said.

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