WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is losing another senior aide — the second high-profile White House official to announce an exit in a matter of days.
Deputy national security adviser Andy Baker will leave the administration in the coming weeks, Axios reported Friday, adding another name to the list of officials heading out as the White House approaches a difficult midterm election season.
Baker was never a household name. Inside the administration, however, he was far from a minor player.
The former Foreign Service officer served as Vice President JD Vance’s national security adviser before moving into a broader White House role. An official White House financial disclosure shows that Baker joined Vance’s Senate staff in 2023, then became the vice president’s national security adviser when Trump returned to office in January 2025.
Axios described Baker as one of the officials most deeply involved in the administration’s foreign-policy and national-security decisions during Trump’s second term. He also took part in negotiations with Iran this year — putting him close to some of the White House’s most sensitive diplomatic work.
Politico reported in February that Baker had become a quiet force in Vance’s orbit, helping shape the vice president’s foreign-policy thinking and the administration’s approach to Europe.
“I’m proud of everything we’ve achieved,” Baker told Axios while thanking Trump, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The White House presented the move as an orderly transition, not a policy rupture. A source close to Baker told Axios that he wanted to spend more time with his family and had remained in the job longer than planned to help hand responsibilities to Cliff Sims and Mike Needham.
Sims, who succeeded Baker as Vance’s national security adviser earlier this summer, will remain in that position. Needham will continue serving as a White House deputy national security adviser.
Vance called Baker an “indispensable member” of the administration’s national-security team, while Rubio credited him with advancing Trump’s America First agenda. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff also praised Baker’s work on international deals.
But the timing is impossible to ignore.
Baker’s departure surfaced only two days after Trump announced that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will step down at the end of August. Leavitt, who recently returned from maternity leave after giving birth to her second child, said she could no longer give both her family and the demanding job the attention they deserved.
Trump said she would remain a top outside adviser, and no replacement has yet been announced, according to ABC News and CBS News.
The two exits hit different corners of the West Wing — one in national security, the other in communications — but together they create an unwelcome picture for a White House trying to project stability heading into the midterms.
Baker is expected to enter the private sector and work with Robert O’Brien, who served as Trump’s fourth national security adviser during his first term, Axios reported.
