AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: President Trump's national security adviser, Mike Waltz, is out of the White House. The president said that he is nominating Waltz to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And in the interim, Trump is replacing Waltz with Marco Rubio, who, by the way, will still also have the job of secretary of state. This is the first major shakeup of Trump's second term, and for more, we're joined now by NPR's Asma Khalid, who's at the White House. Hi, Asma.
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Hi there. It's good to speak with you.
CHANG: Good to speak with you. OK, so tell us more about what's behind the shakeup.
KHALID: Well, Waltz had come under pressure the last several weeks. You probably recall back in March, The Atlantic magazine reported that Mike Waltz had accidentally invited its editor-in-chief to a private text message among Trump administration officials. They were on this text chain discussing plans for a military strike against the Houthis in Yemen. It went on to become a major storyline and, frankly, an embarrassment for this administration. You know, and I will say this administration had not really dealt with the steady beat of staffing scandals it did in the early days of the Trump - Trump's first term. And I will say, broadly, it raised questions about the security and operation of this White House. A couple days after the incident, the president was asked directly who was responsible for this mistake, and here's how he responded.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, yeah, Mike Waltz, I guess. He said - he claimed responsibility. I would imagine - it had nothing to do with anyone else. It was Mike, I guess. I don't know. I always felt it was Mike. But again, the attacks were unbelievably successful. And that's ultimately what you should be talking about, I think.
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TRUMP: So Mike did - he took responsibility for it.
KHALID: And so you heard there, Ailsa. I mean, he publicly downplayed the incident.
CHANG: Yeah.
KHALID: He went on to blame the media for making this into a witch hunt, and he's been defending Waltz publicly. He said last week, when he was asked about Mike Waltz's future, that he is fine.
CHANG: OK, but obviously something changed, right?
KHALID: I mean, even as the president was publicly defending him, he was at the same time leaning more heavily on other top aides for national security issues - people like Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, who he's also been working with on talks to end the war in Ukraine as well as talks with Iran. Trump's also been leaning more heavily on his secretary of state, Marco Rubio. And then in the context of all of this, I would also note that, you know, Waltz has a more traditional hawkish view of foreign policy than some of the other people in the White House around President Trump.
CHANG: OK. Let me just make sure I understand what's going on with Rubio. He is now going to take up both the role of national security adviser while he is also secretary of state - is that right?
KHALID: That is right. In a post this afternoon on his social media site, the president said that Rubio will have both jobs. And I will say this is extremely unusual. The last and only time someone held these two jobs simultaneously was Henry Kissinger in the Nixon administration in the early 1970s.
CHANG: Wow.
KHALID: And Ailsa, I will point out that this was not without controversy. And there are certainly questions about how this is going to work. Even if it is just a short-term assignment, how will it work in practical terms? How long will Rubio be doing multiple jobs? I called up Katie Dunn Tenpas for some guidance. She's with the Brookings Institution, and she's researched White House staffing. She said that this is kind of similar to what Trump did in his first term.
KATIE DUNN TENPAS: So in term one, you might remember, Mick Mulvaney was the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Donald Trump also put him in charge of Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. It's highly unconventional, but it is not unusual for the Trump administration. And I watched it during the first term, and I watched it with a great deal of awe 'cause I had not seen it in prior administrations.
KHALID: And so that's interesting, this idea - right? - of people having multiple jobs, she said, is something she noticed during that first term. Also, in his first term, Trump struggled in particular to keep people in the national security role. He had four different national security advisers during those first four years.
CHANG: Wow, that's right. OK, so what happens now, now that Waltz is going to be the pick for ambassador to the U.N.?
KHALID: Yeah. I mean, this job at the U.N. has been vacant for some time. The president's original pick, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, the president asked her to stay in Congress to help with that slim Republican majority in the House. This U.N. job will require Senate confirmation, and Ailsa, that is key because we'll see if senators have concerns about the use of Mike Waltz's use of messaging apps for sensitive information. We'll see if that comes up during that confirmation process.
CHANG: That is NPR White House correspondent Asma Khalid. Thank you so much, Asma.
KHALID: Nice to speak with you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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