

Mike Waltz invited The Atlantic journalist to the signal group chat, which means he probably had his phone number saved in his contacts. There’s no way Trump trusted Waltz after that, and probably thought Waltz was not loyal, going behind his back talking to journalists, which was the death knell for Waltz. As long as Hegseth proves and maintains his loyalty to Trump, he can keep fucking up. Loyalty is more important to Trump than competence.
Yes, i didn’t mean to imply Trump is smart here, he is of course incredibly dumb. I think though that is how this works out for him, he says an incredibly dumb thing which people fixate on, and that gets the headlines. The horrible things he’s doing are then in articles below the fold, and he gets away with it.