Mike Waltz faces post-Signalgate 'brutal' grilling from Dems in UN ambassador hearing
Source: Fox News
Former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is poised to face members of the Senate Tuesday to get the ball rolling on his nomination to represent the U.S. at the United Nations.
Waltz’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee comes months after he exited his job at the White House amid controversy surrounding his role in a Signal group chat with other top administration officials.
Waltz is expected to call for reforms at the U.N. and is expected to say that it's time to redirect the organization's focus back to peacekeeping, according to his opening statement shared exclusively with Fox News Digital. Waltz's statement says that the U.S. has footed the bill for missions that have endured for decades, and amount to nation-building rather than peacekeeping.
Likewise, Waltz is expected to promise to turn up the heat on countering China and vow to work with the State Department to mitigate Chinese influence.
"Countering China is critical," a draft of Waltz's statement says. "It’s absurd that the world’s second-largest economy is treated as a developing nation throughout UN agencies that gives China favorable status."
Waltz's prepared remarks also urge weeding out "pervasive" antisemitism in the U.N., and claims that the U.N. passed "154 resolutions against Israel versus 71 against all other nations combined."
Additionally, Waltz's statement calls for slimming down the U.N. with staff cuts, due to an overlap in missions and "wasteful" resources throughout the U.N.'s more than 80 agencies.
"It’s worth remembering that, even with cuts, the US is by far the most generous nation in the world," Waltz's draft statement says.
Democrats vowed to grill Waltz during his confirmation process in the aftermath of the Atlantic magazine’s reporting about a Signal group chat that his team had set up to discuss strikes against the Houthis in March.
Even so, the tough questioning from Democrats on the so-called "Signalgate" issue isn’t expected to derail Waltz’s confirmation to the post, given that Republicans hold a 53–47 majority in the Senate.
"It’s all theater — you know he’s going to get confirmed," a GOP foreign relations source told Fox News Digital. "If Signalgate’s a big thing against him, it wasn’t enough to get anyone else fired or impeached or anything like that."
Waltz, a former congressman who represented Florida’s 6th congressional district, is a retired Army National Guard colonel and former Green Beret. During his time in uniform, he served four deployments to Afghanistan and earned four Bronze Stars — the fourth-highest military combat award, issued for heroic service against an armed enemy.
Waltz and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were both entangled in the Signal chat that Waltz’s team created where members of the Trump administration discussed strike plans against the Houthis.
Waltz in March said he took "full responsibility" for the Signal group chat, and the Trump administration has maintained that no war plans were shared in the chat. The Atlantic published the full exchange of messages, which included certain attack details such as specific aircraft and times of the strikes from Hegseth.
On May 1, President Donald Trump announced Waltz's departure from his role as national security advisor and hours later unveiled the former Florida congressman’s nomination to represent the U.S. at the U.N.
Democrats called for Hegseth’s resignation as a result of the chat and warned that Waltz would face the heat during the confirmation process for U.N. ambassador.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois said in a May interview with CBS News that Waltz could count on a "brutal, brutal hearing" from senators, and described his nomination as "failing up."
"He's not qualified for the job, just by nature of the fact that he participated in this Signal chain," Duckworth, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CBS News.
Duckworth, who served in the Illinois Army National Guard as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot and lost both of her legs during a 2004 deployment to Iraq, told Fox News Digital Monday that Waltz's involvement in the group chat should disqualify him from serving as U.N. ambassador. She also said that every official included in the chat should be fired.
"As a retired Soldier, Waltz should have shut the unclassified chain down as soon as he saw Hegseth share such classified information that could’ve gotten our pilots killed," Duckworth said in a statement. "It’s clear Waltz cannot be trusted to make critical and sensitive national security decisions, and I look forward to pressing him on his conduct and holding him accountable."
Duckworth has pinned most of the blame on Hegseth for Signalgate. Prior to Trump’s announcement on Waltz’s U.N. ambassador nomination, Duckworth said in a May post on X that of "all the idiots in that chat, Hegseth is the biggest security risk of all — he leaked the info that put our troops in greater danger."
By: Diana Stancy, Brooke Singman
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