After last week's win, President-elect is moving swiftly to fill his cabinet. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who also presently chairs the House Republican Conference has been selected as ambassador to the United Nations, while Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) has now been selected as his national security advisor. Earlier in the day, a former Republican congressman, Lee Zeldin of New York, was selected to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
As The Wall Street first reported on Monday night about such a pick:
WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump has asked Rep. Mike Waltz, a Green Beret veteran who served in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, to be his White House national security adviser, according to people familiar with the discussion.
The national security adviser is a highly influential post appointed by the president that doesn’t require Senate confirmation. The job entails coordinating among all the top national security agencies, briefing the president and executing his policies.
Waltz will step into his role amid prolonged conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and Trump is expected to try to prevent further escalation abroad by building deterrence against foreign rivals while favoring transactional policies with U.S. allies.
...
Waltz, (R., Fla.), has been an outspoken Trump supporter in recent years, echoing the former president’s no-tolerance on illegal immigration and skepticism of America’s support for Ukraine.
Last year, Waltz penned an opinion piece for FoxNews.com in which he argued that “the era of Ukraine’s blank check from Congress is over.” He has echoed Trump in calling on Europe to do more to ensure the collective defense of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“Stopping Russia before it draws NATO and therefore the U.S. into war is the right thing to do,” Waltz wrote. “But the burden cannot continue to be solely on the shoulders of the American people, especially while Western Europe gets a pass.”
This month, he told NPR that Trump’s vow to negotiate between Ukraine and Russia is “perfectly reasonable” and said that if Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t cooperate, the U.S. has “leverage, like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well.”
Waltz is among the most hawkish members of Congress on China, serving on the House China Task Force that coordinates policy on how the U.S. should compete with China. He also has echoed Trump’s calls for accountability after the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
...
In government, he has served in various capacities at the White House and the Pentagon, including as a defense policy director for Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.
In 2018, he was elected to serve as congressman for Florida’s sixth congressional district, replacing Ron DeSantis, who that year was elected the state’s governor. Waltz’s wife Julia Nesheiwat, a fellow combat veteran who served in several presidential administrations, served as a homeland security adviser to Trump during his first administration.
News of Waltz's pick came on Monday night around the same time that Decision Desk HQ projected that Republicans won enough seats to keep control of the House. Republicans also won control of the Senate last Tuesday night. Even with such a sweep, Republicans' majority in the House looks to be particularly narrow, just as it was for the 118th Congress, especially with vacancies that followed from resignations and even an expulsion.
Stefanik, Zeldin, and Waltz have all been praised for their loyalty and support for Trump. All three also spoke at the RNC, held this year in Milwaukee back in July.
With Stefanik and Waltz's departures, the Republican majority will get even more narrow until a special election is called, assuming that both seats are filled by a Republican. Stefanik won last week with over 62 percent of the vote, while Waltz did with 66.5 percent of the vote.
