Although his name has been mentioned among the contenders to be President Donald Trump's next national security adviser, former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told Newsmax on Friday that he's "rooting for" Gen. Keith Kellogg to be the president's choice.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio temporarily will serve as Trump's national security adviser after Mike Waltz was removed from the position on Thursday.
Fleitz, also a former CIA analyst, appeared on "Wake Up America" and was told his name had been mentioned as a possible permanent successor to Waltz.
"I'd be honored to serve. I don't know whether this is fake news or not," Fleitz told co-hosts Sharla McBride and Marc Lotter. "My candidate is Gen. Keith Kellogg. I think he has the experience and the gravitas and the trust of President Trump to be an extraordinary national security adviser. I don't know that his name is actually in the mix, but I know it's been mentioned on a number of TV networks yesterday, so I'm rooting for Gen. Kellogg."
Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general in the Army, currently serves as Trump's special envoy to Ukraine. He was among early supporters of the then-presidential candidate in 2015.
"Gen. Kellogg was with the president for the first day the first term until the very last day. He helped shut the lights off," Fleitz said. "He's doing a great and very difficult job right now trying to get [Ukrainian President] Volodymyr Zelenskyy to keep him on message with the president's peace effort."
Fleitz explained that the national security adviser must be a "neutral arbiter between different national security agencies." He added that the next person in that role will "reflect one primary issue: to keep our country out of unnecessary wars."
He then cited an example of how Kellogg did just that in 2019 when Trump delayed a retaliatory strike against Iran.
"Trump's whole national security team, except for Gen. Kellogg, wanted to bomb Iran because Iran shot down a drone in June 2019," Fleitz said. "And the president said at the last minute, it would be disproportionate to kill a couple hundred Iranians and start a war just because Iran shot down a drone. It was the right decision."
That's not to say a future attack on Iran would be off the table.
"There is a rush right now to bomb Iran. I think that's wrong. We need to try measures short of war, like crippling sanctions long before we bomb Iran," Fleitz said. "You know, we bomb Iran, we're going to release radiation. We're going to set off fires nationwide, kill tens of thousands of people.
"Maybe the president will decide to do that. But that cannot be the first option. The next national security adviser, I think, is going to be honing in on the urgency to keep our country out of unnecessary wars as part of a peace through strength policy."
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