UNITED NATIONS — Newly minted U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz is trying to make up for lost time at the world’s largest diplomatic gathering this week as he pushes to recover from the Signalgate scandal and prove himself as a loyal member of the Trump administration.
Waltz was confirmed only three days before the high-level week of the General Assembly started and was presented his credentials Sunday. Since then, he has delivered speeches at U.N. Security Council sessions to issue a stern warning to Russia on its breaches of NATO airspace and argue against recognizing a Palestinian state. He has also attended high-level bilateral meetings alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and been spotted speaking to foreign counterparts between U.N. meetings.
But Waltz has a particularly difficult road ahead as President Donald Trump’s emissary to the world body. It’s unclear if he has enough clout with the administration to serve as a dependable go-between. And he’s taking on the post as Trump openly insults the U.N. and looks to cut funding to the organization.
Waltz’s nomination was widely seen in Washington as a demotion from his former post as Trump’s national security adviser. Trump removed Waltz from that position and named him for the U.N. job after he was outed for using the Signal messaging app to discuss sensitive information and accidentally adding a journalist to one of those conversations.
Since then, Trump officials have rallied around Waltz. Vice President JD Vance, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt and Rubio have all downplayed suggestions that Waltz’s appointment was a punishment and framed him as a key player in the Trump administration’s national security team.
“The president still likes Mike Waltz. He wasn’t fired. Security didn’t remove him from the building. He stayed on the executive payroll,” said a former Trump administration official. “Mike Waltz is out of central casting for the administration at the U.N. with his warrior-statesman ethos.”
The official, like others, was granted anonymity to speak freely about the pervading mood around Waltz and the role of the U.S. at the United Nations.
Yet some with experience at the U.N. argue it’s hard for diplomats and other envoys to know how reliable of an interlocutor he’ll be, given how much the scandal seemingly tarnished his star within the administration.
“There’s a lot of personal diplomacy involved in New York, and it’s a face-to-face job more so than in a bilateral relationship — and an ambassador’s cachet is their ability to speak for the president,” said a former U.S. official familiar with the workings of the U.S. mission in New York. “When you have a washed-up ambassador who was so visibly shunted, other countries will grin and bare their teeth hoping that Waltz can convey messages on their behalf.”
The months it took to confirm Waltz haven’t helped his case. Waltz faced delays because Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) prevented the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from advancing his nomination to the full Senate without a favorable recommendation, prompting Republicans to cut deals with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the top Democrat on the committee, to flip her vote. Later, Democrats objected that his nomination was improperly advanced out of committee, requiring another committee vote. It wasn’t clear how much pressure the administration applied, or didn’t, to get his nomination through.
Still, some of those gathered at the U.N. meetings this week say they’re just happy that Trump didn’t leave the post vacant. Trump’s harsh attitude toward the multilateral organization — the president slammed the U.N. as inefficient and ineffective at solving world conflicts in his speech Tuesday — meant that it hadn’t been a certainty.
One European diplomat said there’s general happiness that the U.S. has an ambassador in place. The diplomat, along with many others at the venue, said they couldn’t comment on Waltz himself because they hadn’t yet dealt with the new U.S. ambassador.
The sense of relief extends to some Trump administration critics.
Shaheen, who was one of three Democrats who voted to confirm Waltz, said in an interview on the sidelines of the General Assembly that Waltz appreciates the importance of the U.N. and a strong U.S. presence in Turtle Bay.
“I’m delighted that it got done in time to get him here for the General Assembly,” said Shaheen.
Asked about Waltz’s first week on the job, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, “Ambassador Waltz is already doing a great job as ambassador to the United Nations, and he will continue to advance our nation’s interests on the world stage.”
The Office of the U.N. Secretary-General, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and the State Department did not reply to requests for comment about Waltz’s first week on the job.
The role of the U.N. ambassador can be a powerful one. Some presidents make it a Cabinet-level position. U.S. ambassadors to the body have often enjoyed a large platform to advocate on behalf of U.S. interests around the world and boost their own professional and political fortunes. Many have gone on to hold other foreign policy roles in the U.S. government, including as secretary of State and national security adviser. (Waltz is the first to go the other direction — from national security adviser to U.N. ambassador.)
But the post doesn’t come with much inherent ability to set policy. And it involves living and working almost exclusively from New York, away from the Washington epicenter where decisions are made.
Close proximity to the president is often seen as particularly important in this administration, where many decisions are made in face-to-face conversations with Trump.
Asked about the potential of his new role in a Fox News interview Wednesday, Waltz insisted that he’d be a good foot soldier for the administration’s policies. He also framed his role in terms of Trump’s ambitions to be a peacemaker president of global peace.
“This is a place where we have countries that have presence here at the U.N. that don’t even in Washington, D.C. The place where we can talk, if the president wants to, to the Venezuelans, to the Cubans, the Europeans, to the developing African nations, of course, the Russians and Chinese and others,” Waltz said. “This is a president of peace — absolutely deserves the Nobel Peace Prize — and the U.N. can and should be a forum where we can engage and actually get things done.”
But Waltz also takes on the job on behalf of a president who is directly antagonistic to the world body he is expected to work with. Trump has raised substantive critiques of the organization’s peacekeeping and conflict resolution record and its embrace of climate policies the president has called a “hoax.” He’s also fixated on accusations that U.N. staff sabotaged escalators, a teleprompter and the live interpretation of his speech as a way to undercut his remarks to the General Assembly on Tuesday.
Waltz has shown his willingness to back up the president’s punches. He posted Tuesday in support of the president’s address, calling it a “masterclass in America First diplomacy.” And in a subsequent post Wednesday, he also protested “threats to our security or dignity at international forums” in relation to the equipment and interpretation malfunctions around Trump’s speech.
The ambassador’s defenders say that communicating U.S. policy at a time when the global order has faced serious threats will be no easy task and that the president’s speech does give a sense of the priorities Waltz will pursue in Turtle Bay.
“Mike Waltz has huge challenges awaiting him at the U.N. The system created to defend democracies and preserve world order is now under task by China, Russia and Iran, among others,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a former national security official during the George W. Bush administration, who now leads the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington. “It’s unclear how much impact [Trump’s] speech will have. But it gives us a sense of where this administration may be heading as challenges mount worldwide.”
Waltz also appears ready and eager to enter global debates now that he’s no longer on the sidelines. His speech at Monday’s meeting of the Security Council on Russian incursions into European airspace was well received in European capitals. Waltz could also be seen speaking with British diplomats in between Tuesday’s sessions of the Security Council on the war in Ukraine and the recognition of a Palestinian state. He also met with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi and Japan national security adviser Masataka Okano.
Many of Waltz’s predecessors had much more time to settle into the job before heading to their first meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Most U.N. ambassadors have been confirmed within the first 100 days of the administration in which they served; only a handful have ever been confirmed right before the busiest week of the United Nations’ schedule.
But so far, the administration has been backing — and even amplifying — Waltz’s statements. Rubio in television interviews Tuesday highlighted Waltz’s speech on Russian actions. Leavitt on Thursday morning shared a Fox News article highlighting Waltz’s “stern” warning to Russian leader Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s repeated provocations toward NATO airspace.
Waltz, for his part, is making sure there’s a MAGA flair to his work in Turtle Bay. The new ambassador has on occasion used the hashtag #MUNGA — Make the U.N. Great Again — in his social media posts.
Hans von der Burchard contributed to this report.
