Archive May 4, 2025

United States President Donald Trump on Thursday removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser (NSA), a key policy-shaping role, and tapped Secretary of State Marco Rubio to take over the role in the interim.

Trump announced that he was nominating Waltz to be the next US ambassador to the United Nations. “Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

“I’m deeply honored to continue my service to President Trump and our great nation,” Waltz posted on X Thursday.

The senior official’s reassignment comes in the aftermath of the so-called “Signalgate” incident and his leaning towards aggressive military action against arch foe Iran.

What were the main reasons behind Waltz’s removal?

The army veteran came under heavy criticism after creating a group on the Signal messaging app with other top officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to discuss military attack plans on Yemen.

The group’s chat became public after the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to the group mistakenly. After Goldberg published extracts from the chat, Waltz said he took “full responsibility” for the mistake.

The scandal cast a doubt on Trump’s national security team, with both Waltz and Hegseth coming under fire. Several Democrats called for their resignation in the immediate aftermath of the scandal.

While attending a cabinet meeting held by Trump last week, Waltz was also photographed using a modified and less secure version of Signal to text top officials.

According to The Washington Post, he also upset Trump after engaging in “intense coordination” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the possibility of launching military strikes on Iran.

As the Trump administration continues to pursue Omani-mediated talks with Tehran, Waltz reportedly frustrated the president by adopting an increasingly hawkish stance that favoured military aggression.

Netanyahu’s office, however, denied the daily’s report that claimed he had “intensive contact” with Waltz.

Moreover, he was reported to have built up tensions with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who increasingly felt he was not fit for the Trump team.

Who else is Trump sacking?

Along with Waltz, the president is kicking out his deputy, Alex Wong, according to US media reports, becoming the first senior White House officials to be fired from the second Trump presidency.

A number of inspectors general, federal workers, and senior military officials, including Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and Commander of Air Force Special Operations Command General James Slife, have also been fired.

During his first term, Trump sacked a large number of senior officials, including FBI Director James Comey, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, and NSAs John Bolton and Michael Flynn.

Why are MAGA supporters targeting Waltz?

Waltz has come under fire from some recognised figures in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) camp backing Trump, mainly for a perceived lack of loyalty to the president and a difference in policy approach.

Steve Bannon, a former chief White House strategist and influential figure, criticised Waltz for his hawkish foreign policy stance, particularly his support for military interventions.

Laura Loomer, a far-right activist, highlighted a 2016 video in which Waltz criticised Trump’s remarks about military service members as a sign of his disloyalty.

She also accused Waltz of appointing staffers with anti-Trump sentiments and targeted his deputy, Wong, for alleged ties to Chinese interests.

But JD Vance backed him, arguing that his reassignment was not a demotion but a strategic move that would allow Waltz to better serve the administration in a new diplomatic role.

What’s next for Waltz?

Waltz will now have to secure confirmation from the Senate to become the new US envoy to the UN, in what is expected to be a challenging path.

Waltz is a former army green beret with deployments to Afghanistan that earned him a bronze star for valour. He has written extensively about military strategy and robustly supports national defence.

The Republican is also a former member of the US House of Representatives and used to work as a counterterrorism adviser in the Pentagon during the George W Bush administration.

But the Signalgate controversy, his reported unauthorised communications with Israeli leaders, and opposition by Democrats in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee could work against him.

Who is Waltz’s replacement?

For now, and without any specific time period announced, Rubio is taking over as NSA.

Rubio, himself one of the more hawkish figures in the White House, is assuming more responsibility in a move that could be aimed at consolidating foreign policy leadership and streamlining the decision-making process.

This is the first time since the 1970s that the secretary of state is also acting as NSA.

Trump has not confirmed any potential replacements for Waltz in the future, but Stephen Miller, Steve Witkoff and Ric Grenell are some of the top figures in his circle.

Miller is a senior policy and homeland security adviser known for his hardline immigration and foreign policy stances. Witkoff is serving as special envoy, leading the talks with Russia, Iran, and the Palestinian group Hamas. Grenell is the acting director of national intelligence and a former ambassador to Germany.

Since taking office in January, United States President Donald Trump has undertaken policy after policy that has shocked Americans and the world. From launching an immigration crackdown and persecuting legal residents sympathetic to the Palestinian people to dismantling diversity and inclusion programmes and assaulting higher education and free speech, Trump has fully embraced far-right agendas. His critics at home and abroad have readily called him a fascist.

But fascism is not the ideology of choice for the US president. Fascist movements varied in their approaches to political and economic issues, but they have had several elements in common: The good of the nation is elevated above all, and the state plays an overarching role in society and the economy.

In other words, fascism was an attempt to reformulate the socialist ideal into a strong nationalistic framework. And as a historical reaction to communism and liberalism, it remains exiled in the 20th century, in “the age of extremes,” as the British historian Eric Hobsbawm famously called it.

Trump may be using the language of “America first” in his rhetoric, but he is not really pursuing the “good of the nation”. He is pursuing the good of the 1 percent.

Trump and his cheerleaders want to go beyond neoliberalism, which maintains that a minimal state is ideal for economic prosperity, and establish hypercapitalism by dissolving any controls the state has over the accumulation of wealth by the extremely rich.

They understand that we are living in times when extracting profit from society is not as easy, so they want to free capitalism from the hindrances of democracy and the demands of the people that their rights – political, social and human – be protected by the law and by the state.

The tech bros that Trump has surrounded himself with have wrapped this hypercapitalism in a technological cover, claiming that technology can solve all woes and unlimited growth – read unlimited profits for the rich – is the only way to progress.

This is clearly outlined in writings produced by the likes of Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley billionaire, who penned a Techno-Optimist Manifesto a year before US elections brought Trump to power for a second time. With an almost religious conception of technology and markets, he wrote: “Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die. … We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness – strength. … We believe in agency, in individualism. … We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.”

This view combines unrestrained capitalism with transhumanism – the belief that humans should use technology to enhance their abilities – and an individualistic interpretation of Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest. It is easy to see that this sharp individualistic vision is the opposite of historical fascism, which prioritises the nation and the community over the individual.

Some may point to Trump’s tariff policies as proof that he has statist tendencies. But if you scratch the surface, you would see that the trade war the US president is waging is really not about “bringing jobs back”, “defending national interests” or reversing globalisation.

Trump is using tariffs as a coercive tool to force various countries into negotiating with him. When he announced a 90-day pause on some tariffs, he himself bragged about 75 governments reaching out to his administration. It is far more likely that these bilateral talks will be used to extort concessions that will favour big capital closely associated with the Trump administration rather than to defend the rights of American workers and to create the conditions for the return of manufacturing jobs to the US.

It is true that Trump has attracted the support of postfascist politicians in Europe and uses fascist language and tools, but that is not enough to brand him a “fascist”. European postfascists, like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, have themselves veered away from fascist conceptions of state and economy. Meloni and others have readily embraced “free market” policies of cutting taxes for the rich and wiping out social security provision for the poor. Her economic policies differ little from Trump’s.

The US president has fully embraced xenophobic and racist language reminiscent of fascist rhetoric and launched a vicious campaign against immigrants. He does so not only to scare and win over marginalised parts of society but also to divert their growing discontent towards a racialised “other” rather than the wealthy class.

This strategy is working not only because of the growing resentment for liberal elites that the impoverished majority has accumulated but also because the left has failed to act.

Leftist and progressive politicians have condemned themselves to fruitlessly repeating the old right and left cliches, going on tirades about “Trump’s fascism” and debates about the Nazi or Roman salutes of his associates. Engaging in such rhetoric is futile and a waste of time and energy.

Instead, the left should focus on developing concrete strategies to counter Trump’s popularity and hypercapitalist drive. It should go back to the root of problems that ordinary people face in their lives: jobs, healthcare, education and the ever-deepening cynicism about politics. It needs to not only expose Trump for who he really is – a champion of big capital interests – but also to provide a solid, realistic alternative.