Mike Waltz

Mike Waltz (born January 31, 1974, Boynton Beach, Florida, U.S.) is a former Republican member of Congress from Florida who served as U.S. Pres. Donald Trump’s national security adviser for the first few months of Trump’s second term. After Waltz became a central figure in a scandal known as “Signalgate,” Trump removed him from that job and nominated him as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Early years

Waltz was born in Boynton Beach, Florida, and grew up in Jacksonville. The son and grandson of Navy chief petty officers, Waltz was raised by a single mother. After graduating from Stanton High School in Jacksonville, he received a bachelor’s degree from the Virginia Military Institute and joined the U.S. Army.

Military career

Waltz served for almost 27 years in the Army and Maryland Army National Guard, joining the elite special force Green Berets. He was deployed to Afghanistan and Africa and received four Bronze Stars, two of which were for courage in battle. Waltz wrote a book about his military experience, Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret’s Battles from Washington to Afghanistan. After retiring as a lieutenant colonel he continued to work in the national security space as a civilian, including stints as policy director during the administration of Pres. George W. Bush for defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates and as a counterterrorism adviser to Vice Pres. Dick Cheney. Waltz also started Metis Solutions, a defense contracting company.

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Congress

In 2018 Waltz ran for Congress in Florida’s 6th congressional district, in a race to succeed Republican Ron DeSantis, who successfully ran for Florida governor that year. Waltz easily defeated Democrat Nancy Soderberg, 56 percent to 44 percent, to become the first Green Beret elected to Congress. Waltz won reelection in 2020, 2022, and 2024, the last time with more than 66 percent of the vote against Democrat James Stockton.

In the House of Representatives, Waltz had a reputation as a foreign policy hawk, calling for aggressive use of military force. Even as the administration of U.S. Pres. Joe Biden supplied Ukraine with aid to defend itself after the 2022 invasion by Russia, Waltz criticized the White House for not doing enough, arguing that it should have sent more lethal aid earlier in the war.

China was another area of focus for Waltz. In a 2020 Fox News interview, he called the country an “existential threat” to the United States, adding, “This will be the national security issue much like how we had to face the Soviet Union for much of the 20th century.” On the Middle East, Waltz is a strong supporter of Israel. He also cosponsored a bill that would have authorized military force against Mexican drug cartels responsible for bringing fentanyl across the U.S. border.

National security adviser

A week after his 2024 victory Trump announced Waltz as his choice for national security adviser. Trump praised him as “a nationally recognized leader in National Security, a bestselling author, and an expert on the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, and global terrorism,” adding, “Mike has been a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda, and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!”

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Waltz got off to a rocky start, generating a spate of negative news coverage when he accidentally added the editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a March 2025 Cabinet-level group chat about classified military plans to strike Houthi rebels in Yemen, using the messaging app Signal. The app is generally not an authorized form of high-level government communication. Trump initially backed Waltz, calling him a “good man” and saying his adviser had “learned a lesson.” Waltz said he took “full responsibility” for the scandal, which soon became known as “Signalgate.”

But in May Trump announced that he was nominating Waltz as ambassador to the United Nations and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would serve as interim national security adviser while remaining head of the State Department. It was the first major overhaul of Trump’s second term. “From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first,” Trump wrote on social media. “I know he will do the same in his new role.”

Beyond Signalgate, Waltz proved to be a poor fit for the national security post, in part because he held far more hawkish views than the president. “Mr. Waltz, a veteran who had favored a muscular U.S. foreign policy for many years before Mr. Trump’s rise, had struggled to prove his bona fides to his base,” The New York Times reported. Trump had withdrawn his original choice as UN ambassador, New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, because of the party’s slim majority in the House.

The ambassador post requires Senate approval, and in his confirmation hearing in July 2025, Waltz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he would seek reform of the United Nations, which he said had “drifted from its core mission of peacemaking.” He was confirmed by a vote of 47 to 43 in September 2025.

Personal life

Waltz is married to Julia Nesheiwat, an Army veteran and Bronze Star recipient who served in the administrations of Bush and Barack Obama as well as the first Trump administration. They have a son, Armand. Waltz also has a daughter from a previous marriage.