'Should I Fire Him?' Inside Trump's Reflections on Michael Waltz's Fate

In public, President Trump defended his national security adviser. But behind the scenes, he sought advice.

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President Trump is considering whether to fire Michael Waltz, his national security adviser, after it was revealed this week that he created the Signal chat room to share sensitive information.

For much of this week, President Trump has been consumed by one question: What should he do about his national security adviser, Michael Walz?

“Should I fire him?” he asked aides and allies as the row continued over the stunning leak of a Signal group chat created by Mr. Walz, who inadvertently added a journalist to a thread about an upcoming military strike in Yemen.

In public, Mr. Trump’s default position is to defend Mr. Waltz and attack the media. On Tuesday, a day after The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published a story about his inclusion in the chat, the president said Mr. Waltz was a “good man” who had nothing to apologize for.

But behind the scenes, Mr. Trump was asking people inside and outside the administration what they thought he should do.

He told allies he was unhappy with the press coverage but did not want to be seen as caving to the media mob, according to several people briefed on his comments. And he said he did not want to fire senior people so early in his second term.

But for Mr. Trump, the real issue did not appear to be his national security adviser’s carelessness in discussing military plans on a commercial app, the people said. It was that Mr. Waltz might have had some connection to Mr. Goldberg, a Washington journalist Mr. Trump loathes. The president expressed displeasure that Mr. Waltz had Mr. Goldberg’s number in his phone.

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