In a sweltering Rose Garden on Thursday, as President Donald Trump intoned at length about restoring faith to the White House, he took a moment to single out a man sitting right up front.
“When I have a problem, I call up Marco,” Trump told his crowd, gesturing toward Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “He gets it solved.”
Unbeknownst to the sweat-beaded dignitaries assembled for the president’s event, Trump of late had been discussing a new problem with his top diplomat: national security adviser Mike Waltz, whom he no longer trusted and who’d lost the confidence of much of the West Wing.
The conundrum had been festering for weeks after Waltz inadvertently included a journalist on a Signal group chat to discuss a military strike in Yemen. Now it was no longer sustainable, people familiar with the matter said. Already this week, he’d determined Waltz should not travel with him to Michigan, where the president announced new investment in an Air National Guard base. Waltz flew with him to Joint Base Andrews on his helicopter, but remained behind on the tarmac as Air Force One took off for Detroit.
For weeks, Trump had wavered, wary of appearing to succumb to public pressure and repeating the same cycle of firing national security advisers that lent his first term a mien of chaos. Nor did he want to provide his enemies a perceived victory by caving to their demands. But after 100 days in office, without any major staff departures, Trump seemed ready to pull the plug.
It turned out Rubio, who always “gets it solved,” was himself the solution.
Announcing on social media that Waltz would be departing his corner West Wing office to be nominated as ambassador to the United Nations, Trump declared Rubio would be moving in, taking up the critical post on an interim basis in addition to his current job and several other acting roles.
“Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote. As he departed the White House later Thursday afternoon, he didn’t stop to discuss his decision further.
The shakeup in Trump’s national security team sends Waltz to a confirmation process he never asked for, with the prize a job he never particularly wanted. The five-bedroom, $15 million Manhattan penthouse assigned to the UN ambassador may be cushy, but located 230 miles from the West Wing, it might as well be on another planet in an administration where proximity to the president can amount to everything.
For Rubio, it was the latest sign of his ascent as one of Trump’s most trusted hands, the latest chapter in their decadelong evolution from bitter rivals to loyal confidant. Advisers to both Trump and Rubio insisted Rubio was fully capable of handling both jobs for now. The last man to try was Henry Kissinger, the Nixon and Ford envoy who managed a host of issues – most notably, the Vietnam War – from both the White House and the State Department.
Most secretaries of state spend their weeks in the air darting to foreign capitals. But Rubio has long preferred not to be away from Washington for longer than a few days at a time, choosing instead to be near the president. Like many other Cabinet members, he is at the White House almost every day, even as special envoy Steve Witkoff travels around the world looking to strike deals.
It remains an open question whether Rubio’s new role will be temporary or if he will serve both positions for an extended period as Kissinger did in the Nixon and Ford administrations, when he spent six years as national security adviser and four as secretary.
The president moved swiftly on Thursday with new assignments for Waltz and Rubio to avoid the narrative of staff disfunction and chaos that often dominated his first term in office. But the decision leaves Rubio wearing multiple hats, including acting USAID administrator and acting archivist of the United States.
The shakeup in
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