On Wednesday evening — following a brutal day of headlines surrounding the now-infamous Signal chat — Vice President JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles and top personnel official Sergio Gor gently offered President Donald Trump some advice in a private meeting.

National security adviser Mike Waltz’s accidental inclusion of a journalist in the chat was creating a major embarrassment for the White House. Perhaps it was time to consider showing him the door, they suggested, according to two people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity to discuss them.

The president agreed that Waltz had messed up, according to the people, but Trump ultimately decided not to fire him for one reason — for now: Like hell he’d give the liberal media and pearl-clutching Democrats a win.

“They don’t want to give the press a scalp,” said one of the people, a White House ally close with the team.

Despite simmering anger directed at the national security adviser from inside the White House, Waltz still has his job five days after The Atlantic first published its explosive story on the Signal chat. That doesn’t mean he’s safe yet, according to the two people.

In fact, the two allies have heard some administration officials are just waiting for the right time to let him go, eager to be free of the newscycle before making changes.

One of them offered this prediction: “They’ll stick by him for now, but he’ll be gone in a couple of weeks.”

Vance’s office declined to comment. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that “President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”

Indeed, news about the previously unreported Wednesday night conclave — as well as the pervasive sentiment that Waltz is not long for the administration — comes as top officials are publicly rallying to his defense.

On Friday, Vance — an avowed team player who appears to have quickly accepted Trump’s decision — included Waltz in a high-profile trip to Greenland, happy to leave personnel decisions up to the president, according to a person familiar, granted anonymity to discuss the private dynamics.

He went further, taunting reporters, suggesting they were just eager for drama. He vowed that they wouldn’t get it.

“If you think you’re going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody you’ve got another thing coming!” he said. “I’m the vice president saying it here on Friday: We are standing behind our entire national security team.”

The president himself said this week Waltz took responsibility and has “learned a lesson.”

What’s more, lucky for Waltz, the fever pitch of the drama appears to have faded. And the top headlines are about to quickly turn from “Signalgate” to Trump’s April 2 tariff deadline. And next week’s special elections are already casting into sharp focus the politically precarious position of the party.

Still, behind the scenes — and despite the White House’s public effort to cast the entire episode as a smear campaign by the media — there’s a sense that Waltz has lost the trust of his colleagues and flubbed his response.

A spokesman for Waltz, Brian Hughes, pushed back on suggestions that Waltz’s future remains in doubt, arguing that “the chattering of unnamed sources should be treated with the skepticism of gossip from people lacking the integrity to attach their names.”

“Mike Waltz serves at the pleasure of President Trump and the president has voiced his support for Mike,” Hughes said. “The entire National Security leadership team has led a successful and effective counter terrorism mission and that is what media and Democrats are trying to obscure.”

The Wednesday evening meeting came as frustration with Waltz reached a boil at the White House. A day earlier, Waltz claimed to reporters he “never met, don’t know, never communicated with” Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor-in-chief who was included in the chat. “Wouldn’t know him if I bumped into him, if I saw him in a police lineup,” Waltz said on Fox News Tuesday night.

But the next day, administration officials — already skeptical of his assertion — became more perturbed following a viral social media post showing Waltz standing next to the editor at an embassy event years ago.

A Waltz ally, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation, said it’s absurd to think just because he was pictured next to someone in a room full of people, at a large private event, that he knows Goldberg.

As they passed around the tweet, officials shared another story that made them equally irate: that Waltz’s contacts on Venmo were public — and included a few mainstream journalists.

More infuriating to top officials was what they viewed as Waltz’s refusal to take responsibility. They didn’t like that he appeared to suggest the journalist broke into the Signal chat willy-nilly, an allegation that may have triggered some sort of investigation, prolonging the scandal.

Most of all, some in the White House were disappointed that Waltz did not at least offer Trump his resignation to see if the president wanted it.

“When you’re a staffer and you become a liability or distraction for your principal, you fucking resign — I don’t care what the situation is” the second person said.

Meanwhile, stories of discontent with Waltz have started to trickle out — and not just because of his hawkish ideological views that some of his skeptics believe diverge from “America First” isolationists in the administration.

Multiple Trump allies have started to claim that Waltz — even before the controversy — was seen by some in the administration as too big for his britches. Two people close to the West Wing told POLITICO he lingers around Trump too often and appears to put on airs.

“People don’t like him. He thinks he’s a principal and he’s not. He’s a staffer, and he has a hard time wrapping his fucking head around that,” one of the two said.

White House allies are also prattling about Waltz’s relationship with fellow Floridian Wiles, whispering that it has soured since he was named to the administration. At one point, Waltz sought to push her out of top-level meetings for the NSC, telling her he’d just brief her later on, according to one of the people. Wiles told Waltz that’s not his call.

“He doesn’t treat her with the kind of respect that he should be treating a chief of staff, and he was probably going to be gone at some point anyway,” said the other person familiar with the dynamic. “So he probably will be gone, but they just don’t want to make it about this.”

The Waltz ally said Waltz has nothing but utmost respect for Wiles.

Trump, interestingly, has been in this boat before. During his first few months of his first term, the president faced similar outside pressure to fire his then-national security adviser Michael Flynn, after news surfaced that he had lied to then-Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump officials about his conversations with Russian officials during the transition.

Trump gave into the pressure and ousted a man he otherwise viewed as a loyal foot-soldier — only to regret it later. The president and some of his advisors felt that by giving in, they bowed to a Russia narrative that would plague the rest of his presidency.

But this term may be different.

“His superpower has been that he doesn’t care or respond to the press,” one of the people said.

But while that saved Waltz this time, it may not next time, the person added.