President Trumpʼs senior policy adviser Stephen Miller is the leading candidate to replace the fired Mike Waltz as national security adviser.
This was reported to Axios by five sources familiar with the situation.
Miller is the White House deputy chief of staff and the chief architect of Trumpʼs controversial hardline immigration policy. He is one of the US presidentʼs most loyal and long-standing aides.
One White House source said that Miller had made the Homeland Security Council "run like clockwork" and that it was "far more effective than the National Security Council, with a fraction of its staff".
Trump has a habit of relying on a small circle of advisers and delegating a lot of authority to them, so it’s not surprising that Miller could hold multiple positions at once, according to Axios’ sources — as does Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also currently acting as national security adviser.
“Marco and Stephen have worked closely on immigration, and this could be a perfect match,” another White House official said.
“Given how well he worked with Rubio, many consider Miller to be the ideal candidate to return the national security adviser position to a policy advisor role that reports to the chief of staff and does not have the status of an exaggerated ministerial position,” another source added.
A fourth source said Miller expressed interest in the position on Thursday. A fifth source said Miller may not want the position "if it distracts him from his true passion, immigration policy".
What happened?
Waltz was fired shortly after he became embroiled in a scandal in March 2025. He accidentally added a journalist from The Atlantic, a Trump-critical publication, to a chat with other members of the National Security Council. There, they were discussing future strikes on Yemenʼs Houthis. The Atlantic later released several reports based on the officialsʼ correspondence.
The Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been particularly criticized. The entire circumstances of the scandal, dubbed Signalgate, are being investigated by the Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Defense. Waltz admitted that he accidentally added a journalist to the chat, but the White House denies that classified information was posted there.
Trump did not fire Waltz and publicly supported him, calling him “a good guy who admitted his mistake”. However, CNN sources are convinced that Waltz has failed to restore the lost trust in the presidential administration and Trump’s personal trust. If Waltz is fired, it would be the first major personnel reshuffle since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025.
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