SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
During his first term in office, President Trump went through a great many cabinet appointees, especially national security advisers. A little more than a hundred days into his new term, the president's national security team is again in flux. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre joins us. Greg, thanks so much for being with us.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Good to be here, Scott.
SIMON: Let's start with the latest. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz was removed - or should we say relocated? - from his role. What was the stated reason? Where did he go?
MYRE: So Trump plans to nominate Waltz to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Now, Vice President JD Vance tried to downplay any sense of turmoil. In an interview on Fox News, he said Waltz was being given a new position for which he seemed better suited.
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VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: The media wants to frame this as a firing. Donald Trump has fired a lot of people. He doesn't give them Senate-confirmed appointments afterwards.
MYRE: So still, Trump wouldn't be doing this if he wasn't unhappy with Waltz's performance in some way, and this U.N. job is seen as a bit of a consolation prize. Now, Waltz took responsibility for accidentally adding a journalist to that now infamous Signal group chat back in March, and that was probably one contributing factor to his move.
SIMON: And, yet, did he make the same misstep this week?
MYRE: At Tuesday's cabinet meeting, a Reuters photographer was there. He took a photo sort of over the shoulder of Waltz, and it showed Waltz using Signal on his phone. And in addition to this, Waltz has had some policy positions that seem a bit out of sync with Trump. Before he joined Trump's team, he was very tough on Russia and supportive of Ukraine, in contrast to Trump. So this was probably a factor as well.
SIMON: The president is replacing Waltz, at least temporarily, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will also keep his job as secretary of state. This is a lot of work, isn't it?
MYRE: Yeah. I think the first thing Rubio is going to need to do is clone himself because he's going to have to be in two places at once. The secretary of state is in constant motion, traveling from one foreign capital to the next. And in contrast, the national security adviser is usually quite close to the president. His natural habitat is the White House, and the Situation Room in particular. His job is to work with various agencies - the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department - and help the president sort through policy options. So it's not a natural fit to do both jobs simultaneously. It is likely a temporary arrangement, and it does suggest Trump is putting a lot of trust in Rubio, for now. One other note, the last time this happened was under President Nixon when he put Henry Kissinger in both those roles. Rubio seems to have Kissinger beat. He has two other jobs as well - the acting head of USAID and the acting head of the National Archives.
SIMON: Before this shake-up, it seemed that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, might be the cabinet member most likely to lose his job. Does Secretary Hegseth seem safer now?
MYRE: Well, given Trump's unpredictability, nothing is certain. But Hegseth looks to be safe for the moment. He's still facing a lot of criticism. His hand-picked advisers have been dismissed. So it seems there's still some turmoil at the Pentagon. And as you noted, Scott, there's unprecedented churn in Trump's national security team in his first term. He had four separate national security advisers. The first one, Mike Flynn, lasted less than a month. He also had four defense secretaries and four directors of national intelligence.
SIMON: Of course, all of this is occurring at a moment when there are a number of conflicts and challenges abroad. Bring us up to date.
MYRE: So Trump still wants a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war. That's proving elusive. He's been more supportive of Russia in general. But this week, the U.S. signed an agreement with Ukraine on natural resources, so this may keep Trump a bit more engaged with Ukraine. Trump came into office just as the Israel-Hamas truce was taking effect. That's now collapsed. The war in Gaza grinds on amid a major humanitarian crisis. And today marks seven weeks since the U.S. launched a bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. And we're still getting minimal information. We do know the U.S. has lost at least a half dozen drones at $30 million apiece. And a jet fighter, which cost more than 60 million, fell off the deck of an aircraft carrier this week and sank in the Red Sea.
SIMON: NPR's Greg Myre. Thanks so much.
MYRE: Sure thing, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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