Vance heaped praise on former national security adviser Mike Waltz, who Trump announced today will instead be nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“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,” Vance said in an interview with Fox News’ Brett Baier. “Donald Trump has fired a lot of people. He doesn’t give them Senate-confirmed appointments afterwards.”
Waltz was removed from his post weeks after he was embroiled in controversy for mistakenly adding a journalist to a Signal chat alongside several Trump officials, including Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which details about an impending military strike were shared.
JD Vance says Mike Waltz has Trump’s ‘trust’, continued
Vance heavily disputed the notion that Waltz’s reassignment stemmed from the Signal chat mishap.
“If the president wanted to fire him over the Signal thing, which, by the way, was a total nothing-burger of a story,” Vance said. “He actually decided it’s better for Mike to be in this new role.”
Vance said that, if anything, the Signal leak portrayed him, Waltz and Hegseth in a positive light.
“I thought it reflected well on me, I’m obviously biased about myself, but about Mike Waltz [and] Pete Hegseth, that we were deliberating how to implement the president’s agenda. I think that’s what a good national security team should do.”
