Trump Backs National Security Team Amid Scrutiny Over Group Chat Incident: Trump still supports his national security team, including Mike Waltz. There will be a lot of attention specifically on him. As we pointed out in our reports, there are 18 people in that, Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz – they were all in the chat. However, it appears he is the one who pulled the trigger and invited Mr.
Goldberg into the group chat. He may be more culpable. At the same time, he is also at the top of the chain in terms of national security. Those questions will be asked today. I think he, in particular, is going to face a lot of heat because of his involvement in this particular chat group.
Talks between U.S. and Ukraine officials in Saudi Arabia this morning have now apparently ended. Yesterday the U.S. team met with officials to discuss the maritime cease-fire across the Black Sea. For this, I am joined by Willie James Inman. We are expecting the U.S. and Russia to release this joint statement – it was hours ago – why the delay?
Hey there, Errol, good to see you this Tuesday morning. We expected that statement at 4:00 a.m. local time, 11:00 a.m. in Moscow. That never materialized. The President is calling these conversations between the U.S. and Russians in Saudi Arabia useful but really, there is nothing to share yet.
The Russians are looking over and taking notes, of course, looking over this conversation that have been in Saudi Arabia and coming to perhaps some type of decision. There is this maritime cease-fire deal, as you mentioned, that would add on to that limited cease-fire that has already been agreed to by the Russian and Ukrainian leaders.
I will also point out that Mike Waltz on Face the Nation Sunday said an infrastructure cease-fire went into effect immediately following the conversation between President Trump and President Putin of Russia. Details are still being worked out. Both sides on this piece are optimistic some type of agreement will come about and perhaps we will see that statement sometime later, Errol.
I want to ask you about the mass firings we have been reporting the last few weeks. The Trump administration yesterday asked the Supreme Court to pause a decision that requires six agencies to reinstate more than 60,000 federal workers who were given the boot. What do we know about that?
Those probationary employees could perhaps be reinstated following that court order. The Trump administration is saying, look, you can’t come in between the executive branch and its ability to make decisions about how its personnel is handled.
That is what they are doing in the situation – they are asking the Supreme Court to intervene in this court order, which, as you mentioned, would affect workers at the Veteran Affairs Department, Agriculture, the Defense, Interior and these probationary workers, who have been on the job about a year or two, will be reinstated, according this court.
The Supreme Court now, of course, has a case before it – it is not the first case to come before the Supreme Court for the Trump administration.
Source: raialkhalij + aljazeera