Michael Waltz is the first casualty of the nascent Trump 2.0 administration but he is far from the last. The only reason more heads aren’t rolling is because Trump doesn’t want to give the press, the left, or any of his detractors the satisfaction of watching the whole house of cards begin to come tumbling down. So he keeps the ticky tacky edifice of his administration in place. Trump claims that everything is solid and resilient, the fact of the matter is more like stage flats, which grips pick up and move to change scenes. Today Waltz was before Congess with respect to his UN Ambassador nomination, where he started to call Senator Jacky Rosen “congresswoman” and that was the least of his gaffes.
“I was not fired.” I guess we need to define “fired” a bit more narrowly, just like we need to define “shot” the same way. When Trump claims he was “shot” yes, some sort of a projectile flying through the air struck him and caused some scratches and minor loss of blood. But Trump was not “shot” by a bullet from an AR-15 as he claims, in the ear. The ear is still totally intact, zero scars.
By the same token maybe Waltz wasn’t “fired” but he was removed from the job in some fashion. He ceased doing the job, in any event, but he didn’t cease getting paid to do it. Waltz defended that by talking about the need for a “transition.” But you didn’t hear him elaborate from what to what.
The simple truth that everybody in the world who follows American politics knows, is that Waltz had no business being a national security advisor — anymore than Pete Hegseth has being the Secretary of Defense. You can see from Waltz’s demeanor that he was nervous as hell and he sounds evasive. This is highly unusual for somebody being confirmed for a post like UN Ambassador, which is a high level public relations/diplomacy post, requiring a great deal of knowledge in foreign affairs and a background in diplomacy.
Except in Trump world. In Trump world it is where you send the guy who couldn’t cut it as the NSA and pull the rug out from loyal Elise Stefanik while doing so. Stefanik would probably have made a good ambassador. At least she’s smart, she’s been in politics a while and she would take it upon herself to learn what is necessary. Waltz is going to handle this gig like he handled the last one, stumbling through it all the way.
But he will collect his pay. Mike Waltz always collected his pay. Whether he worked or not and what he did, exactly, are other questions. And don’t ask them because he’ll get pissed.
