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Susie
Wiles, White House chief of staff, during a roundtable in the Cabinet
Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8. Photo: Yuri
Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Susie Wiles, President Trump's
chief of staff, chronicled the chaotic inner workings of the White
House in a series of shockingly candid, unfiltered interviews with
Vanity Fair throughout the year, publishedTuesday.
Why it matters: Wiles discussedTrump's
"alcoholic's personality," Elon Musk's drug use and USAID chaos,
Vance's "sort of political" conversion, the Epstein files debacle, boat
strikes targeting Maduro, and whether Trump will defy the 22nd
Amendment.
Her interviews offer the most unvarnished look yet at power and peril in Trump's second term.
Wiles
offered blunt assessments of influential figures around Trump including
Musk, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Office of Management and Budget
director Russell Vought, who she called "a right-wing absolute zealot."
She
also denied speculation that Trump would defy the 22nd Amendment and
try to run for a third presidential term. "But he sure is having fun
with it," she said, adding that he knows it's "driving people crazy."
What they're saying: Wiles cast the two-part Vanity Fair profile as a "disingenuously framed hit piece" on her, Trump, the Cabinet and White House staff.
"Significant
context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the
team and the President was left out of the story," she wroteon
X Tuesday in her first post in over a year. "I assume, after reading
it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative
narrative about the President and our team."
"President Trump
has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie," White House press
secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. "The entire
Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully
behind her."
"I
very rarely speak out about my father's staffers, but there is no one
on Earth more equipped to serve my father as Chief of Staff than Susie,"
Donald Trump Jr., one of the president's sons, said on X.
What the profile said: Wiles
"is a 'go to church every Sunday, uses a swear word very, very rarely'"
type of person, James Blair, her deputy chief of staff said. "She
doesn't raise her voice. But she likes being around junkyard dogs."
Read about some standout moments:
Trump "has an alcoholic's personality"
Flashback: Wiles,
who as a young woman staged an intervention that got her famous father
into rehab, drew a comparison between Trump and her late father, NFL
legend Pat Summerall.
While Trump has avoided alcohol his whole life, Wiles said he shares some of the personality traits she deems similar to an alcoholic.
State of play: "High-functioning
alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are
exaggerated when they drink," she said. "And so I'm a little bit of an
expert in big personalities."
Trump "operates [with] a view that there's nothing he can't do," Wiles said. "Nothing, zero, nothing."
Wiles on Musk: an "odd, odd duck"
Driving the news: Wiles said that Musk, who oversaw major government downsizing, is an "avowed" ketamine user who slept in a sleeping bag in the Executive Office Building in the daytime.
"The challenge with Elon is keeping up with him," she said "… He's an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are."
Zoom in: Wiles
said she was initially "aghast" at Musk's dissolution of USAID and that
"no rational person" could think his process was good.
She added that there are details of the responsethe president "doesn't know and never will."
Wiles would support Vance 2028 presidential run
What we're watching: Wiles
said she'd be "one of the first people" to support a 2028 presidential
run from Vice President JD Vance. She added that if he ran, he'd secure
the GOP nomination.
Vance's conversionfrom
a Never Trumper to MAGA diehard was "sort of political," Wiles said.
While discussing the Epstein files, she also said he's been a
"conspiracy theorist for a decade."
The intrigue: Vance,
in an interview for the Vanity Fair piece, praised Wiles for not trying
to "control" or "manipulate" Trump like his first-term staff.
"There
is this idea that people have that I think was very common in the first
administration," he said, "that their objective was to control the
president or influence the president, or even manipulate the president
because they had to in order to serve the national interest. Susie just
takes the diametrically opposite viewpoint."
Trump and Epstein were "young, single playboys together"
What's inside: Trump is mentioned
in what Wiles called "the Epstein file," but he's not documented doing
anything "awful." She said the president and the convicted sex offender
were "young, single, playboys together."
Wiles denied that Trump drew a nude sketch for Epstein's 50th birthday.
Friction point: She
also said Trump was "wrong" to say there was incriminating evidence
against former President Clinton in the Epstein files. "There is no
evidence" Clinton visited Epstein's private island, she said.
She
criticized Attorney General Bondi's handling of the Epstein records: "I
think she completely whiffed" by giving influencers "binders full of
nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client
list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell
wasn't on her desk."
Maduro, not drug busts, fuel Trump's boat strikes
Between the lines: Wiles
contradicted the administration's messaging on deadly boat strikes. She
said Trump "wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.
And people way smarter than me say that he will."
The
administration has previously said that the boat strikes are in an
effort to halt the flow of drugs to the U.S., not to oust Venezuelan
President Nicolás Maduro.
The fine print: She conceded that attacking targets on Venezuela's mainland would require congressional approval.
"The
president believes in harsh penalties for drug dealers, as he's said
many, many times," Wiles said about the attacks on boats.
Comey, Letitia James and Trump's retribution streak
Behind the scenes: Wiles said she and Trump had a "loose agreement" to end so-called "score settling" by the end of his first 90 days.
"I don't think he wakes up thinking about retribution," she said. "But when there's an opportunity, he will go for it."
She admitted the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James was retribution, while insisting the president was not on a retribution tour.
She alsoconceded the targeting of former FBI director James Comey "does look vindictive."
Reality check: A
federal judge threw out Trump's indictments of James Comey and Letitia
James in November. While Bondi vowed to appeal, the Justice Department
has yet to do so.