‘It’s like hanging on to a freaking bullet train’
State Dept. spokesperson on President Trump shuffle of his national security team, nominating national security advisor Mike Waltz for UN ambassador & Sec. State Marco Rubio to succeed him for now.
There were inklings this morning at the State Department that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was going to have to be at the White House on Friday, rather than do another tentatively scheduled public engagement at the Department. Normal enough. Several times a week, State Department officials indicate that Rubio is at the White House for meetings, many of which are not on the public schedule. Planned trips suddenly are canceled.
“Fluid” is how one advisor put it, about plans in the Trump administration.
But what seemed slightly odd today was that President Trump’s schedule had him leaving tonight for Alabama and then heading to his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida for the weekend. So Rubio was going to have to be at the White House on Friday, but Trump wouldn’t be there. ?
Bit puzzling.
Just one data point, until a few hours later, Trump posted that he was nominating his beleaguered national security advisor Mike Waltz to be his ambassador to the United Nations, and was “dual-hatting” Rubio to be both interim National Security Advisor as well as Secretary of State.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce did not sound very surprised by developments, even as a reporter read her Trump’s just-published Truth Social post announcing the shuffle during the department briefing.
“We’ve seen him (Rubio) be at the White House several times a week,” Bruce said. “His close working relationship day-to-day with the President happens for a reason-- because they work well together. They clearly have been in an environment where they’ve gotten to know each other very well.”
“We have to admit these last hundred days, it’s like hanging on to a freaking bullet train,” Bruce continued. “I mean, it is a fast dynamic with people who have a journey that is set with a goal that has been determined, and it’s staffed with men and women who understand what the agenda is and how to get it done.”
“So when we think about how is Secretary Rubio going to do this, well, it’s like how does President Trump run the United States? You have people around you,” Bruce continued. “It’s about managing people. It’s about assigning people to the right roles…And if anybody can do it, … it will be Marco Rubio.”
Journalist Mark Halperin: Waltz ouster was in the works for a while, the problem was figuring out who to replace him
Journalist Mark Halperin first reported today that Waltz’s ouster was imminent. It had been in the works for a while, he reported, but had been delayed in part by figuring out who to replace him.
“The decision to get rid of Waltz has been percolating for a long time,” Halperin reported on his podcast, Up Next. “You'll recall that he led that Signal chat group that caused so much controversy and raised questions about his competence. Ironically, I think that controversy helped keep Waltz in his job for longer, because President Trump didn't want to give a scalp to those like Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic…
Halperin: It wasn’t about ideology
“What's been going on behind the scenes, … is that people in the national security part of the administration, at the State Department, elsewhere in the White House….it wasn't about ideology,” Halperin continued. “It wasn't the question of whether Waltz was too neocon or wasn't on the right side of issues. It was about process and competence. People thought he was too concerned about being in charge and not running a tight ship.”
“The reason that this has been delayed, besides the President not wanting to give the media the satisfaction of getting rid of his National Security Advisor, is they need someone to take the job, and they've had a difficulty finding someone,” Halperin reported.
“They considered a guy from the State Department, Marco Rubio’s number two,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, who served as US ambassador to Mexico during Trump’s first term. “He's doing such a good job. He's got job lock. …He's not going to get the job, I'm told, because Rubio says ‘No, he's too valuable helping run the State Department.’
“The person who is front and center to potentially get the job is Steve Witkoff,” Trump’s special envoy on the Middle East, Iran, and Russia, Halperin continued. “He's got the confidence of the President. ….But there are a lot of people in… the government who are very supportive of the President's agenda who think Witkoff is in totally over his head.”
“So yesterday, before I got wind of the of the replacement plan with the National Security Advisor, a story popped up in the New York Post, a very negative story about Witkoff,” Halperin noted, suggesting he thought the piece might have been planted to try to deter Trump from naming Witkoff national security advisor.
(Witkoff, for his part, has indicated that he is not interested in the job.)
“The President faced a choice whether to delay the decision to get rid of Waltz, which, again, was being called for by lots of people around him until they could find a candidate, or fire him and leave the job basically open, or have Waltz do it until they find a replacement,” Halperin reported. “So I think what happened today...The people who wanted Waltz out…didn't want to let the President change his mind…And so what I think happened is they said, ‘Let's put out the story that Waltz has gone;’ that’ll force the President's hand…….and then he'll find someone.
“Because sometimes Donald Trump follows through on personnel stuff, and sometimes he doesn't,” Halperin said.
Another rumored candidate to eventually fill the National Security Advisor job I have heard mentioned is Michael Anton, the State Department director of policy planning, who led the US technical team to talks with Iran held in Oman last week and with Russia in Saudi Arabia last month.
One source said during the transition, Anton had discussed the national security advisor job, but he had not been interested to work with Trump’s NSC counterterrorism advisor, Sebastian Gorka.
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