Michael Waltz, the national security adviser under fire after The Atlantic reported that he included its editor on a Signal group chat where top U.S. officials discussed sensitive military plans, is a former three-term Florida congressman and Fox News fixture.
Before reaching the House, Mr. Waltz served tours in Afghanistan and Africa, rose to the rank of colonel and received four bronze stars, including two for battlefield valor. He worked as a Fox News commentator before becoming the first Green Beret elected to Congress.
But Mr. Waltz, a 51-year-old with a slight Southern drawl, had been walking a tightrope even before the disclosure of the group chat. As a custodian of traditional conservative foreign policy doctrine and a former strong supporter of Ukraine, he has been viewed uneasily by the president’s fiercest loyalists.
Some even wondered if Mr. Waltz might be an early administration casualty, squeezed out like previous national security advisers by opposing, powerful forces: the Washington political class who feared he was too much like Mr. Trump, and the loyalists who suggested he did not go far enough.
By Tuesday, as Mr. Waltz faced calls for his resignation over the revelation that he invited a reporter into a sensitive chat with other top officials, Mr. Trump appeared to throw his national security adviser a lifeline, at least for now.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson,” Mr. Trump told NBC News. “And he’s a good man. “’
Mr. Waltz, for his part, hasn’t spoken publicly on the leak.
He was born in Boynton Beach, a city in southern Florida, and grew up in Jacksonville, raised by a single mother. When he was running for Congress, his campaign website, which is no longer active, said, “Serving my country is all I’ve really wanted to do.”
During President George W. Bush’s administration, Mr. Waltz served as a policy director at the Defense Department and a counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
He first ran for Congress in 2018 as a pro-Trump but compromise-minded Republican, winning comfortably in a district that had been represented by Ron DeSantis, who successfully ran for Florida governor that year.
Mr. Waltz’s campaign signs were alligator green, a nod to his status as a Green Beret. As he basked in his victory, he told WKMG-TV that he was “fighter” like Mr. Trump, and he declared that voters wanted to see the country “moving forward” and lawmakers getting along.
“Compromise can’t be a dirty word,” he said.
He was invited to the White House in early 2020 to join a small group of Republicans who were briefed on a drone strike that killed a top Iranian commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
Later in 2020, he received blowback in Florida when he supported a lawsuit aimed at overturning presidential election results in states that Mr. Trump had lost. The editorial board of The Orlando Sentinel, which had once praised his pragmatism, apologized for endorsing him.
“We had no idea, had no way of knowing at the time, that Waltz was not committed to democracy,” the editorial board wrote in 2020.
Still, Mr. Waltz ultimately voted to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, decrying the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as a “despicable display of violence and intimidation.”
As a congressman during Mr. Biden’s presidency, Mr. Waltz loudly denounced the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and, joining most House Republicans, opposed the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack.
He also appeared regularly on Fox News and other networks. And in 2022, he published a colorful, animal-filled children’s book about service called “Dawn of the Brave.” Last year, he published another book, “Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret.”
In November, Mr. Trump chose Mr. Waltz to be his national security adviser, a high-profile White House post tasked with overseeing foreign and national security.
“Mike has been a strong champion of my America First foreign policy agenda,” Mr. Trump said in a statement at the time, “and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!”
As national security adviser, Mr. Waltz joined a group of U.S. officials who traveled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to negotiate with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on a peace deal to halt the Russia-Ukraine war. Mr. Zelensky accepted an agreement for a 30-day cease-fire, but Russia did not.
Mr. Waltz had joined other Trump administration officials in chastising Mr. Zelensky after an explosive public meeting at the White House in which Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance angrily accused the Ukrainian leader of being ungrateful to the United States. Mr. Waltz told CNN that Mr. Zelensky had been “incredibly disrespectful.”
Mr. Waltz’s wife, Julia Nesheiwat, is a former Army intelligence officer. She served as homeland security adviser during Mr. Trump’s first term as president.