Updated May 5, 2025 at 12:51 PM CDT
For the first time since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s, the same person will simultaneously serve as both Secretary of State and national security adviser.
Marco Rubio has been tapped to serve as interim national security adviser after President Trump announced that Mike Waltz, who held the role, has been nominated to represent the U.S. at the United Nations.
This comes after Waltz inadvertently added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief to a group chat where sensitive information was shared about March strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. Vice President Vance denies that the move is a "firing."
Before Rubio, Henry Kissinger led both the State Department and the National Security Council for two years under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Kissinger was hugely influential in shaping the post World War-II era of global politics.
If President Trump believes the move gives him more control, he is "dead wrong," his former national security adviser John Bolton told Morning Edition. The move may actually be "diminishing" his own control over the State Department and the various national security agencies, Bolton continued.
And while it puts Rubio in an advantageous position, Bolton said it won't be easy.
"There's some overlap between those jobs, inevitably. But they are so fundamentally different that I think…that no one individual can really handle them, particularly given the threats and challenges we face in the world today," Bolton said, noting he was not intending to criticize Rubio.
Bolton, who was also ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration, spoke to NPR's Michel Martin about why Trump may have made this change and how it might affect decision making in the White House.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Michel Martin: So for people who don't keep up with this kind of thing, what is the core responsibility of each job?
John Bolton: Well, the national security adviser is in charge of coordinating discussions among the various departments and agencies that form part of the national security responsibilities of the president to help provide the president with the information that he needs to make decisions, given the options that are available to him and the pros and cons of each. And then after he makes a decision, to coordinate the implementation across the bureaucracy – State Department, Defense Department, intelligence community, Homeland Security, Treasury and on and on.
The Secretary of State is charged with being the lead diplomat for the United States, running a 75,000-person department with embassies and consulates all over the world, and really trying to achieve through diplomacy what the country's foreign policy objectives are.
Martin: My recollection from when I was a White House correspondent is that the national security adviser stuck pretty close to the president. He or she would brief the president every day, whereas the secretary of state was constantly on the road. So just on that basis alone, what is your sense of this decision? Why do you think they've made it?
Bolton: I think Trump has had a longstanding suspicion of the National Security Council staff. He believed elements of it represented the deep state and were trying to subvert his presidency. So he may well think that minimizing the role of the NSC staff will be a plus for him. He's dead wrong on that. In fact, he is, in effect, reducing his own scope of control by combining these two roles. But it certainly puts Marco Rubio in a very advantageous position indeed. Over the weekend, Trump said that he looked at not only J.D. Vance, his vice president, but Marco Rubio as a potential successor. So from Rubio's point of view this is a real opportunity.
Martin: You think that, in fact, this is not as advantageous to President Trump as he may think that it would be. Say more about that.
Bolton: One of the criticisms of Kissinger that ultimately led Gerald Ford to split the positions again and make Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, was the Defense Department and other agencies felt that Kissinger biased decision making below the presidential level in his favor. And it's one reason why the national security adviser is often called an honest broker, that there are disputes between departments based on institutional disagreements, differences in their functions, that the NSC staff process is designed to help mitigate.
Moreover, the whole idea that the secretary of state – really almost alone – should be by the President that much time, I think, will diminish the president's capacity through the bureaucracy to keep control of the State Department and keep control of the other agencies, too. All of these jobs are more than full time. And when you diminish one aspect of one of the jobs, you're going to tilt the system in a way that's ultimately disadvantageous to the president, even though he may not see it that way and probably disadvantageous to the country, too.
Martin: So I also want to mention that Marco Rubio is also overseeing what's left of USAID and the National Archives, although it seems clear that the president doesn't value the work of USAID. You mention that the national security adviser is an honest broker. I'm wondering if President Trump doesn't want an honest broker.
Bolton: Well, he wants everything centered in him. And obviously, the president ultimately makes the decisions. The issue is whether he makes informed decisions or whether he's surrounded by a bunch of yes men and yes women who, when he says, "Let's reopen Alcatraz, what a great idea," they all say, "Yes, sir." And they don't say, "Well, here are the considerations you might want to take in mind. Here are the pros and cons of that."
The president will decide one way or the other. If that's what he wants to do, his decision will prevail, but he can either make a spur of the moment decision, which is Trump's typical style, or he can make an informed decision. And downplaying the role of national security adviser, I feel, will lead to more displays of fealty by Trump's staff, but fewer informed decisions.
Martin: Now, all of this is happening because President Trump removed Michael Waltz as national security adviser. He nominated him to be ambassador to the United Nations. That's a post that you once held. Given all the circumstances behind that, what do you think it says that the president is sending Mike Waltz to the United Nations?
Bolton: I think he's exiling him to New York. Different presidents have different styles and they listen to different people in different regards on different issues. It's very hard to characterize. But there's no doubt if Waltz is in New York doing his job, he's not in Washington talking to the president. And you can give [him] the UN ambassadorship cabinet rank — really doesn't make any difference — just to show up around the table every once in a while. I did it in the reverse way: UN ambassador first, national security adviser later. And I think that's a more normal line of progression than what we're seeing now.
Julie Depenbrock produced the radio version of this story.
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