Trump stands by Waltz as the president and his allies deploy a familiar playbook

President Donald Trump not only stood by his embattled national security adviser on Tuesday, amid fever-pitch conversations about Mike Waltz’s fate in the wake of an extraordinary security breach; he invited him for a seat at the table in the Cabinet Room to send an undeniable message of support.

President Donald Trump not only stood by his embattled national security adviser on Tuesday, amid fever-pitch conversations about Mike Waltz’s fate in the wake of an extraordinary security breach; he invited him for a seat at the table in the Cabinet Room to send an undeniable message of support. “No, I don’t think he should apologize,” Trump said, after branding it “the only glitch” of his new administration. “I think he’s doing his best.” The president insisted classified information had not been shared in a group chat with his national security team about military strikes in Yemen. He declined to answer how he reached that conclusion, but the fact that he addressed the matter and took repeated questions underscored how his advisers said they believed that only he could defuse the crisis. After watching an explosive Senate hearing in the morning, the White House sought to contain the fallout by using the president’s bully pulpit to try and change the subject. Trump appeared on camera, surrounded by his ambassador picks, for a previously unscheduled meeting where he also signed executive actions on conservative pet issues like requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration and declassifying the FBI’s Russia probe documents. His afternoon remarks served a dual purpose of sending a message to allies on Capitol Hill and beyond in hopes of quelling a deepening controversy over how it came to be that war planning was debated and discussed in a group chat on Signal. The president’s loyalists employed a familiar page from the Trumpian playbook of attacking the messenger – the media – as they dealt with one of the biggest challenges of the young presidency. As top White House officials began to carry out that strategy, people close to Trump – some of whom had been wary of Waltz’s survival rate on Monday after it first emerged he had added an Atlantic editor to the chat – argued that if the national security adviser could stay above the fray for another day or so the story would die down and he would remain.