Sen. Tammy Duckworth slammed Mike Waltz for “failing upward” now that Trump wants to move him from National Security Adviser to UN Ambassador after they made him the fall guy for their SignalGate scandal.
Trump pulled Elise Stefanik’s nomination after they decided they couldn’t afford to lose any more House members. Now they’re trying to move Waltz into the job so they can save face and say they’re not actually firing him, but just moving him to a different position.
Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan asked Duckworth about the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings for Waltz. “Senate Intel Vice Chairman Mark Warner says it’s going to be a brutal hearing. What do you want to know from him? And are you open to confirming him into the job?”
“It will be a brutal hearing. He’s not qualified for the job, just by nature of the fact that he participated in the Signal chain,” Duckworth responded. “In fact, I think everybody on that Signal chain needs to be fired, because not a single one of them spoke up and said, hey, this is inappropriate. We should be in a secure channel.”
Duckworth noted that it was “really interesting was that there was not a single uniformed personnel on that Signal chain” and told Brennan she believed it was “purposefully done to keep the military personnel with the experience off of that Signal chat,” before slamming Waltz.
“Now, Mike Waltz is doing what we call, he is failing up, right? He is failing in his job and getting promoted to be ambassador. That’s not what our nation needs at the United Nations.”
Brennan pointed out that Waltz served as a Green Beret and a lawmaker before asking Duckworth “You think he is incompetent, and you’re not open to voting for him at all?”
“I’m not open to voting for him, no, because he – because he’s already demonstrated he’s incapable of doing the most basic thing, which is handling classified information,” Duckworth replied, making it clear that Waltz didn’t deserve any deference for any of it. Honestly, I think it makes what he did worse since he obviously knew better and didn’t care.
Duckworth is absolutely correct that the whole lot of them on the chat should have been fired. In a sane world, they would have been, but that’s not the one we’re living in right now.