“Should I dismiss him?” Inside Trump’s deliberations on the fate of Michael Waltz

For much of this week, President Trump was consumed by a single question. What should he do with his national security advisor Michael Waltz?

“Should I dismiss him?” He asked aid and allies when the benefits continued above the astonishing flight of a group cat cat put in place by Mr. Waltz, who inadvertently added a journalist over the course of a next military strike in Yemen.

In public, Mr. Trump’s default has been to defend Mr. Waltz and attack the media. Tuesday, the day after Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic was included in the cat, the president said that Mr. Waltz was a “good man” who had nothing to apologize.

But behind the scenes, Trump asked people inside and outside the administration, which they thought he should do.

He told the Allies that he was not satisfied with the coverage of the press but that he did not want to be considered a fat for a media swarm, according to several people informed of his comments. And he said he was reluctant to dismiss people in the upper ranks so early in his second term.

But for Mr. Trump, the real problem did not seem to be the negligence of his national advisor to the discussion of military plans on a commercial application, people said. Mr. Waltz may have had a kind of connection with Mr. Goldberg, a Washington journalist that Trump hates. The president expressed dissatisfaction with how Mr. Waltz had Mr. Goldberg’s number on his phone.