All the Ass-Kissing in the World Couldn’t Save Mike Waltz After SignalGate

The first Trump administration was a nonstop revolving door of cabinet members filing in and out amid an onslaught of scandals. And now, a little over three months into Trump’s second term, we have our first departure: National security adviser Mike Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, are set to leave their posts on Thursday, CBS News reported. The exit comes one day after after Trump’s 100-day televised cabinet meeting, during which Waltz delivered a master-class in ass-kissing: “The last four years, the world experienced a total lack of leadership under Biden and then we’ve had 100 days of your leadership with respect, with strength,” he told the president. Barf. Not 24 hours later, Waltz is reportedly out.

Mike Waltz takes his turn kissing Trump’s ass. Trump is going around the room and giving everyone a chance to pucker up and smooch.

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 30, 2025 at 12:06 PM

Waltz’s departure conspicuously comes two months after a little thing called SignalGate, wherein Waltz inadvertently added an Atlantic journalist to a Signal chat where he and a handful of other top Trump officials shared a bevy of classified military information about their war crimes in Yemen. To state the obvious, there was a lot wrong with this, from the fact that Signal is an unauthorized and insecure platform for communications of this nature, to the comically cringe emoji usage by Waltz in the chat. (Forget about just being fired in disgrace—celebrating killing civilians by texting a fist and American flag emoji should be grounds for prison.)

Nevertheless, in classic, Trumpian fashion, the president refused to look “weak” or like someone who would cave to public pressure, so he adamantly stood by Waltz. Of course, I’d argue it looks much, much weaker to have zero standards for your employees’ conduct and refuse to discipline someone for exhibiting humiliating levels of incompetence. In any case, sources who spoke to CBS News confirmed that the reason Waltz is departing now, and not in the immediate aftermath of SignalGate, is, indeed, Trump’s pride. “One source familiar with the situation at the National Security Council said the president thinks sufficient time has passed since the Signal incident that Waltz and Wong’s departures can be framed as part of a reorganization,” the outlet reports. “The president has been hesitant to oust Waltz over the perception that doing so could be seen as bending to outside pressure.”

In March, Trump maintained that Waltz was “a good man” who “learned a lesson.” Trump didn’t ask Waltz to step down, nor did Waltz offer to do so, which, wow! I’d honestly kill for that level of misplaced confidence.

My biggest takeaway here, honestly, is that maybe there’s hope yet that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—the alleged rapist who appears to be as addicted to sharing state secrets via text as he is to drinking—will be ousted from this administration down the line, too. Maybe evil Trump administration officials aren’t as impervious as they all appear, and after a scandal involving them winds down, within one to three months, they could be forced out, too—on to a lucrative career on Cameo, off to prison, or, if they’re feeling particularly spicy, perhaps a book tour further exposing how evil and incompetent Trump is, months or years after the fact.

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