From the New York Times: “President Trump is ousting his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and another senior member of the White House’s foreign policy team, the first significant personnel overhaul of top aides in his second term, according to people familiar with the situation. Mr. Waltz had been on thin ice since he organized a group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss a sensitive military operation in Yemen and accidentally included a journalist in the conversation.”
Readers will recall that Ethics Alarms issued several posts about the Signal chat debacle, the first of which , on March 24, ended thusly: “This will be an early test of how serious the new administration is about accountability. Someone’s head should roll for this.”
Someone’s head has. It was one of the right heads, too.
Trump’s action is absolutely the ethical and competent course, and should remind everyone, including the lackeys of the news media, that the previous administration didn’t care about accountability, nor competence, performance or merit—just “historic” DEI appointments who could never be fired. President Biden didn’t fire anyone, despite presiding over one of the most inept administrations in U.S. history.
Of course, Presidents are supposed to be demanding and to fire screw-ups, so Trump deserves no special credit for a decision that should have been as easy as it was necessary. Nevertheless, it’s gratifying to know the man in the White House is engaged and has standards he’s devoted to enforcing.
As for me, I’m just glad to get rid of Waltz because that “t” in his name kept making me misspell the last name of Governor Knucklehead in Minnesota.
Ethics Alarms 