This is an adapted excerpt from the May 1 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
After over 100 days of national security chaos and the Signal chat scandal, Michael Waltz is out as Donald Trump’s national security adviser. That is the headline, but it hardly does justice to how this all unfolded.
It started with reports on Thursday morning that Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, were soon to be removed from their jobs. But by the afternoon, Waltz’s ouster was spun into something else. Trump took to Truth Social to confirm Waltz was out and announced his nomination as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Make no mistake about it: This is a demotion for Waltz.
In that same post, Trump also announced Secretary of State Marco Rubio would act as his “interim” national security adviser. This was an abrupt and incredible shake-up, one that would leave Rubio simultaneously holding at least four official full-time jobs in the government: secretary of state, acting national security adviser, acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and acting head of the National Archives.
The news of Rubio’s new role even came as a surprise to those at the State Department. After a reporter asked spokesperson Tammy Bruce about how long the secretary would serve in the position, Bruce responded that she “just heard” the news.
Make no mistake about it: This is a demotion for Waltz. He is out of the core of the security establishment and nominated to a still-open position that does not amount to much in a Republican administration.
In fairness to Waltz, he lasted longer than Trump’s first national security adviser back in 2017, Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia. (Trump later pardoned him.) Flynn lasted just 22 days, and his departure foreshadowed an administration that was constantly churning through personnel.
Whatever the reasons for Waltz being marginalized, Trump is rearranging the deck chairs on a badly listing ship and trying to do it in a way that doesn’t look bad for him. Part of that involves him consolidating two of the most important roles in the federal government — secretary of state and national security adviser — and giving them to Rubio.
The president is now consolidating power even further, giving two powerful positions to one sycophantic subordinate. When Rubio was asked at Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting if, as secretary of state, he had been in touch with El Salvador about returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States and whether a formal request had been made, Rubio said he would “never tell.” “You know who else I’ll never tell? A judge. Because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States and the executive branch, not some judge,” Rubio continued. A child of Cuban immigrants who once made his bones in the Senate, standing up against dictators and for the rule of law, is now the face of Trump’s draconian, unconstitutional deportation regime. That’s the kind of loyalty Trump rewards. In order to cover the incompetence of his administration, the president is now consolidating power even further, giving two powerful positions to one sycophantic subordinate.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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