Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida has a tough stance on communist China, having been vocal on Beijing’s espionage and human rights abuses.
President-elect Donald Trump has picked Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), a vocal critic of communist China, to serve as his national security adviser, Reuters said on Monday, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
Waltz, who won reelection last week for his fourth term representing the Sixth Congressional District in east-central Florida, was the first Green Beret elected to Congress. He has been chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
He is also a member of the House China Task Force. In 2021, he released a video on social media platform X saying the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the “biggest threat America has ever faced.”
The national security adviser is appointed by the U.S. president and does not require Senate confirmation. If reports bear out, Waltz will take on the critical role of briefing Trump on national security matters and coordinating with various agencies.
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump–Vance transition spokeswoman, didn’t confirm the reports about Waltz. “President-Elect Trump is making decisions on who will serve in his second Administration. Those decisions will be announced when they are made,” she told The Epoch Times.
Before becoming a Florida congressman, Waltz served as a military adviser in the Bush administration and worked under defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates as a defense policy director.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, took to X late on Monday saying that he was thrilled by the reports of Trump’s pick.
“There is no one more capable or qualified for this crucial role,” Rogers wrote. “As a Green Beret, Rep. Waltz bravely fought to defend our nation. As a leader on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Waltz has continued to work around the clock to bolster U.S. national security.
“Our national security is in good hands with Rep. Waltz at the helm.”
‘China Initiative’
During his first term in office, Trump broke with his predecessors to confront the CCP head-on, pushing back against its malign and hostile behaviors. One key program during that time was the “China Initiative,” which was launched by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in late 2018 and led to a significant increase in prosecutions against China’s state-sanctioned theft of trade secrets.
Under the Biden administration, the DOJ terminated the program in early 2022 following a department review of the initiative’s practices.
In March 2022, Waltz and two other House Republicans sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division, urging him to reverse the decision to end the initiative.
“The China Initiative has strengthened U.S. efforts to aggressively investigate and prosecute cases of CCP economic espionage and theft of U.S. trade secrets,” the letter reads.
Waltz also voiced his concern about the CCP’s espionage in early 2023 after a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon flew over the United States for days before being shot down.
“This balloon episode can have a silver lining, and that silver lining is that I hope this is a wake-up call for all of American society and across our government that we are undergoing a tidal wave of Chinese espionage,” Waltz told NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, in February 2023.
In October, federal prosecutors charged five Chinese nationals with allegedly lying and trying to conceal their actions near a remote Michigan military site where thousands of troops had gathered for summer drills. The incident happened in August 2023, when the five defendants were undergraduate students at the University of Michigan.
In response to the indictments, Waltz wrote on X that “the vast majority [of Chinese students] are fine kids, but they have NO CHOICE but to spy for China if the CCP directs them to!”
“We would never allow this from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. President Trump will put a stop to this,” he said.
Human Rights
Waltz has been outspoken about the Chinese regime’s human rights record.
In early 2021, he introduced a resolution (H.Res.129) calling for a U.S. boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
“The world cannot legitimize the CCP’s acts of genocide in Xinjiang, destruction of the democratic rights of Hong Kong, and dangerous suppression of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan that cost lives by sending delegations to Beijing,” he said in a statement at the time.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have determined that “genocide” was taking place in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang, pointing to the CCP’s detention of more than 1 million Uyghurs in its internment camps.
In June, a U.N. human rights expert called on China to release information on the status of Gulshan Abbas, a retired Uyghur medical doctor who has been detained in China since 2018.
Following the U.N. expert’s appeal, Waltz took to X demanding that the CCP release Dr. Abbas, saying she “is one of millions of Uyghur Muslim political prisoners in China.”
In September 2022, Waltz was one of eight Florida lawmakers who sent a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken expressing concerns about a detained Falun Gong practitioner named Zhou Deyong in China. They pointed out that the CCP has subjected Falun Gong practitioners to arbitrary detention, torture, sexual assault, and slave labor since it launched a persecution campaign in 1999 to eradicate the group.
On June 4, 2023, Waltz took to X to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and shared the famous Tank Man photograph.
“Communist China fears their own people more than anything,” he wrote. “Today we remember the bravery of those who stared down communism at Tiananmen Square.”
In April 2021, four intruders barged into the printing plant of the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times, damaging computers and printing equipment in an attack believed to have been carried out by the Chinese regime to silence the news outlet.
“The attack on The Epoch Times’ Hong Kong printing plant today was an act to silence any and all opposition,” Waltz wrote on X at the time.”This is even more evidence of the #CCP’s systematic attack on basic human rights.”
Taiwan
Waltz has also been a member of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus. He advocates for strengthening Washington’s support of Taiwan’s self-defense.
“The lesson we need to learn from Ukraine is that NOT arming our allies ahead of time is the reason deterrence failed,” he wrote on X in 2022. “The time is NOW to arm & train Taiwan to deter China if we want to make sure history does not repeat itself.”
The CCP considers Taiwan a part of its territory and has been threatening war to take over the island.
Last year, CIA Director William Burns said that CCP leader Xi Jinping had instructed China’s military to be ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan.
Waltz was one of the co-sponsors of the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, which was introduced in 2021. If enacted, the legislation would strengthen Taiwan’s ability to resist the Chinese regime’s aggression and encourage the U.S. president and U.S. secretary of state to travel to Taiwan to meet with the island’s president, according to a press release.
Waltz and a group of lawmakers traveled to Taiwan and met with then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in October 2022. In an X post about his Taiwan trip, he wrote that the United States must stand with Taiwan and the Taiwanese people “in their fight for freedom & basic human rights.”
In a book published last month titled “Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret,” Waltz presents a five-part strategy for preventing war with China, including expediting military support for Taiwan, reassuring allies in the Pacific, and modernizing naval ships and aircraft.
Due to Beijing’s opposition, Taipei cannot participate in international organizations such as the World Health Organization. Waltz addressed the issue in May 2020 amid the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Through hard work and expertise, #Taiwan was successful in the fight against #COVID19,” Waltz wrote on X at the time. “Taiwan should be allowed a seat at the table to share that expertise with the world at the World Health Assembly!”
Reuters contributed to this report.
