Duckworth says Mike Waltz will have a "brutal hearing" for U.N. ambassador

Washington — Sen. Tammy Duckworth said Sunday that she expects Mike Waltz to have a "brutal hearing" for U.N. ambassador after his surprise departure last week from his post as President Trump's national security adviser.

"He's not qualified for the job, just by nature of the fact that he participated in this Signal chain," Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

Duckworth argued that everyone in the group chat where the timing and targets of an attack on Houthis in Yemen was shared and was revealed in March to have inadvertently included a journalist, should be fired, because "not a single one of them spoke up."

"Now, Mike Waltz is doing what we call — he is failing up," Duckworth said. "He is failing in his job and getting promoted to be ambassador. That's not what our nation needs at the United Nations."

Before he was tapped as national security adviser, Waltz had represented Florida in the House since 2019, and he is a Green Beret veteran who served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. After the reports that Waltz was out as national security adviser were published, President Trump said he planned to nominate him as U.N. ambassador.

Though the national security adviser post did not require Senate confirmation, the job as ambassador to the United Nations does, teeing up a confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the near future.

Duckworth, who sits on the committee, said she's "not open to voting for him," arguing that he's "already demonstrated he's incapable of doing the most basic thing, which is handling classified information."

Mr. Trump's first pick for U.N. ambassador, Rep. Elise Stefanik, withdrew her name from consideration due to concerns about an open seat in Congress.

President Trump announced Thursday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would take over for Waltz as national security adviser, in addition to previously giving him the duties of acting USAID administrator and acting archivist. Duckworth voted with 98 of her colleagues in the Senate to confirm Rubio as secretary of state in January. But when asked whether she's confident that he can juggle all four jobs, Duckworth said no, while pointing to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

"Especially since there's such incompetence over at DOD, with Pete Hegseth being Secretary of Defense, and just the hollowing out of the top leadership, there's no way he can carry all that entire load on his own," Duckworth said of Rubio.

Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran who also sits on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, argued that Hegseth should be dismissed. But, she added, "whether or not President Trump's going to dismiss him, is a whole different conversation."

"He should never have been nominated in the first place," Duckworth said, calling Hegseth "the most untrained, inadequate, Secretary of Defense in our nation's history."

After it was revealed in March that an Atlantic journalist was inadvertently included in a group chat where the timing and targets of an attack on Houthis in Yemen was shared, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, announced a bipartisan request for an expedited watchdog investigation into the Signal chat leak. Duckworth said senators don't have a timeline for results of the investigation, while calling the situation "very serious."

"He put into an unclassified Signal chain that the aircraft are going to be over a certain point in space at a certain point in time," Duckworth said. "That's classified information. Any basic person getting through military training knows that is classified information."

Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who previously led the House Intelligence Committee and also appeared on "Face the Nation" Sunday, said Waltz "has an incredible background and experience," adding that he's "certainly glad that he's going to be retained and staying in a strong role in this administration."

On Rubio, Turner noted that Henry Kissinger also served as both secretary of state and national security adviser in the 1970s. And he said Rubio, from a policy perspective, is "very strong in this administration," noting that his taking over the national security adviser post "sends a signal of continuing the same policies in the administration" and a "signal of continuation and strength," which he called "excellent."

Turner said now Rubio should be given the opportunity to build out the team on the National Security Council, adding that hopefully he will be able to build a "strong team there that represents, really, the opportunity to support President Trump."