LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump's national security adviser, Mike Waltz, is leaving the White House.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The announcement comes after he took the blame for accidentally adding a journalist to a group chat of top Trump officials - a chat where they discussed plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen. It's the first big shake-up in White House staff since Trump started his second term.
FADEL: NPR's Franco Ordoñez is traveling with the president, and he joins us now from West Palm Beach. Hi, Franco.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: Hey, Leila.
FADEL: OK. So tell us more about how this went down and what it all means.
ORDOÑEZ: Well, I'll say the White House is trying to put a good spin on it. President Trump says he's nominating Mike Waltz to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as interim national security adviser while continuing to do his current job, as well. And it's very unusual, I'll say, for one person to hold both major roles, and it's not clear how it's going to work. And we really don't know who's going to replace Waltz, either. This is all happening just a couple weeks before Trump's first major foreign trip to the Middle East.
Now, there has been - or there was - a lot of turnover in Trump's first term, especially at the head of the NSC, but this is the first big shakeup of Trump 2.0. For Waltz, his new job will depend on confirmation by the U.S. Senate. So that means, actually, that the issue of how Waltz handled that group chat is likely to be front and center again, and that could really make the confirmation process tricky.
FADEL: We spent a lot of time over the past month talking about the Signal incident. How did that controversy factor into Trump's decision here?
ORDOÑEZ: I mean, it was embarrassing for the White House. Waltz did take responsibility for accidentally inviting the editor of The Atlantic into a private Signal chat, which was made up of top officials. They were discussing sensitive plans for U.S. strikes on the Houthis in Yemen. Trump initially defended Waltz and downplayed the incident as a, quote, "glitch." I was actually with Trump yesterday, and he didn't talk about moving Waltz. But Vice President JD Vance did, and he insisted that the Signal chat was not the reason for this change during an interview on Fox News.
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VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I like Mike. I think he's a great guy. He's got the trust of both me and the president. But we also thought that he'd make a better U.N. ambassador as we get beyond this stage of the reforms that we've made to the National Security Council.
ORDOÑEZ: By reforms, Vance means staffing the NSC with people who are more loyal to Trump and support his policies.
FADEL: Trump has a lot of people around him on national security issues. How did Waltz fit in there?
ORDOÑEZ: You know, Waltz had kind of a diminished role in recent months. He was more of a traditional Republican hawk compared to some of the other advisers who want to get America out from foreign involvement, and Trump loyalists never really trusted him. And we've seen Trump lean more heavily on other aides when it comes to big conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and even in talks with Iran. Those included Rubio, as well as the Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Waltz just never seemed to fully align with Trump's approach to Moscow and other adversaries. But I will note that Vance also said in that Fox interview that that's not what this is all about.
FADEL: And finally, Franco, before we go, we hear that the Army is planning a parade to mark the president's birthday. Sounds unusual. What can you say about it?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. It's a big military parade to mark the Army's 250th anniversary, as well as Trump's 79th birthday, which falls on June 14. That's according to a source familiar with the planning, who wasn't permitted to talk publicly, who told my colleague Tom Bowman. The source said the plan is awaiting White House approval.
FADEL: That's NPR's Franco Ordoñez. Thank you, Franco.
ORDOÑEZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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