To experts in White House Kremlinology the writing was on the wall for Mike Waltz, Donald Trump’s national security adviser.
On Tuesday, he was spotted flying with the president aboard Marine One from the White House to Joint Base Andrews, just outside Washington, but did not make it up the stairs to Air Force One for the flight to Michigan and a landmark speech celebrating 100 days in power.
Less than 48 hours later a slew of administration officials quietly confirmed that Mr Waltz, a former special forces Green Beret, had lost the confidence of the president making him the first major scalp of Mr Trump’s second administration.
Officially, the White House kept up a wall of obfuscation all morning. “There is no comment at this moment,” said Steven Cheung, director of communications, in a reminder that nothing is final until confirmed by Mr Trump.
And then it came in the form of a Truth Social post. The president announced he was sending Mr Waltz to New York to be his permanent representative to the United Nations.
Along the way, Mr Waltz appeared to have fallen foul of two of the key women in Trump world, making his position unsustainable weeks after it was revealed he added a journalist to a Signal chat being used to discuss highly sensitive military plans.
Laura Loomer, a tireless hardline Maga voice, has made it her mission to root out anyone she deemed disloyal to the president. She claimed the scalp on Mr Waltz on Thursday, declaring he had been “Loomered”.
But other reports suggested that Mr Waltz had lost the confidence of Susie Wiles, Mr Trump’s chief of staff, and the second most powerful figure in the White House.
A former White House official said three things had undone Mr Waltz.
He had always been on the Russia-sceptic, hawkish wing of the Republican Party, and his hiring of like-minded allies had only further raised suspicions in Mr Trump’s Maga world that his America First credentials were unreliable.
Insiders had also questioned his knowledge of key foreign policy areas. Was his experience as a special forces colonel on multiple deployments to Africa and the Middle East enough to make him an expert on the niceties of diplomacy and international affairs?
And then there was Signal-gate. Mr Trump’s national security apparatus became a global laughing stock when it emerged that Mr Waltz had accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine, to an encrypted chat about bombing Yemen, apparently after storing his number under the wrong name.
“That made him look JV,” said the former official, using an abbreviation for “junior varsity,” a term of abuse for amateurish behaviour. “Usually it is the national security adviser who is the most protective of information and the most cautious about these things.”
Mr Waltz was already short of allies.
The president likes to fill his team with conflicting views so he can step back and let them duke it out before he makes the final decision.
Mr Waltz was one of the few Russia hawks in the administration, arguing internally for sanctions on Moscow if it failed to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine.
That put him in conflict with other Cabinet figures, as well as influential outsiders such as Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, and Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist.
He had come from a more traditional wing of the Republican party. And in 2016 he had even been part of the party establishment trying to block Mr Trump from winning the Republican nomination. In a campaign video, he essentially accused Mr Trump of being a draft dodger.
Mr Waltz worked his way into Trump world only after the president’s 2020 election defeat. Mr Waltz became a familiar face on TV speaking up for the former president and, with his political base in Florida, he became a regular at Mar-a-Lago and its campaign headquarters.
Some of Mr Trump’s most loyal supporters had kept the receipts, however, and were waiting for their moment.
Mr Waltz lost four key staffers at the start of the month after Miss Loomer, whose passion for conspiracy theories saw her barred from Mr Trump’s plane at the end of last year’s campaign, urged the president to fire National Security Council officials for disloyalty.
She reportedly presented Mr Trump with a list of a dozen names and examples of why they should not be trusted.
The president later said Miss Loomer, who once claimed 9/11 was an inside job, had not been involved with the dismissals, but called her “a very good patriot.”
Since then she has described how Mr Waltz was her eventual target, and told Tara Palmeri, a journalist, that she had kept video of the then Florida Congressman attacking Mr Trump.
“Donald Trump hasn’t served this country a day in his life,” Mr Waltz says in the 2016 clip. “Don’t let Trump fool you.”
But the bigger problem for Mr Waltz may have been inside the White House where his judgment was being questioned.
Ms Wiles, as a big beast of Florida politics, had helped bring the congressman into the fold. But within weeks they clashed when he tried to keep her out of top-level national security meetings, according to a source.
It triggered a round of briefing that Mr Waltz had become too big-headed for his own good.
The pressure from the Maga base coupled with the internal unhappiness simply “made for a perfect storm,” said the former White House staffer.
After the turmoil of the first administration, which lost a national security adviser within 22 days, this White House managed 101 days before its first big departure. And even then. Mr Trump has managed to maintain an aura of stability by finding a high-profile job for Mr Waltz at the UN.
But for a president who relies on key players having access to the Oval Office it is a clear demotion.
And allies in Europe will worry that Mr Trump is now without one of the grown-ups in the room, someone who could be relied on to temper the president’s most isolationist impulses.
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