WASHINGTON- President Trump's chief of staff is defending herself after granting an extraordinarily candid series of interviews with Vanity Fair in which she offers scathing judgments about the president and blunt assessments of his administration's shortcomings.
The profile of Susie Wiles, Trump's secretive and influential top aide since he took office, caused an uproar in Washington and prompted a crisis response from the White House that involved nearly every figure in Trump's orbit issuing a public defense.
In 11 interviews conducted over lunches and meetings in the West Wing, Wiles described billionaire Elon Musk's early failures and drug use during his tenure in government and Atty's mistakes. General Pam Bondi on her public handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Wiles also acknowledged that Trump had launched a campaign of retaliation against his perceived political enemies.
“I don't think he wakes up thinking about retaliation,” Wiles told Chris Whipple, the Vanity Fair writer who has written extensively about former chiefs of staff, “but when there's an opportunity, he'll take it.”
Wiles also cited missteps in the administration's immigration crackdown, contradicted a claim Trump makes about financier and convicted sex offender Epstein and former President Clinton, and described Vice President JD Vance as a “conspiracy theorist.”
Within hours of Tuesday's Vanity Fair publication, Wiles and key members of Trump's inner circle mounted a robust defense of his tenure, calling the story a “key piece” that omitted exculpatory context.
“The article published early this morning is a falsely framed swipe at me and the best president, White House staff and cabinet in history,” Wiles said in a post on X, his first in more than a year. “Important context was ignored and much of what I and others said about the team and the president was left out of the story.”
The profile was published with the knowledge and participation of other senior staff, and was illustrated with a photograph of Wiles and some of Trump's closest aides, including Vance, Bondi and adviser Stephen Miller.
The profile revealed a lot about a chief of staff who has kept a low profile in the West Wing, continuing her management philosophy carried out during the 2024 election, when she was Trump's last campaign manager: she let Trump be Trump. “Sir, remember that I am the chief of staff, not your boss,” she recalled telling the president.
Trump has publicly emphasized how much he values Wiles as a trusted aide. He did so at a rally last week where he referred to her as “Susie Trump.” In an interview with Whipple, she talked about having difficult conversations with Trump on a daily basis, but that she picks her battles.
“So no, I'm not a facilitator. I'm not a bitch either. I try to be thoughtful about even what I do,” Wiles said. “I guess time will tell if I've been effective.”
Despite his passive style, Wiles shared concerns about Trump's initial approach to tariff policy, calling the taxes “more painful than I expected.” She had urged him, unsuccessfully, to end his campaign of retaliation within his first 90 days in office, to allow the administration to move on to more important matters. And he had opposed Trump's blanket pardon for defendants on Jan. 6, including those convicted of violent crimes.
Wiles also acknowledged that the administration needs to “take a closer look at our deportation process,” adding that in at least one case mistakes were made when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested and deported two American mothers and their children to Honduras. One of the children was being treated for stage 4 cancer.
“I can't understand how you make that mistake, but someone did,” he said.
On foreign policy, Wiles defended the government's attack on suspected drug ships in the Caribbean Sea and said the president “wants to keep blowing up ships until [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro cries uncle”, suggesting that the objective is to seek a change of governments.
As Trump spoke of possible ground attacks in Venezuela, Wiles acknowledged that such a move would require congressional authorization.
“If I authorized any activity on land, then it would be war, then [we’d need] Congress,” he said.
In an exchange with Whipple, he characterized Trump, who abstains from alcohol, as having an “alcoholic personality,” explaining that “high-functioning alcoholics, or alcoholics in general, have exaggerated personalities when they drink.”
He “operates [with] a vision that there is nothing I cannot do. “Nothing, zero, nothing,” he said.
But Trump, in an interview with the New York Post, defended Wiles and his comments, saying he would indeed be an alcoholic if he drank alcohol.
“She's done a fantastic job,” Trump said. “I think from what I've heard the facts were wrong and it was a very wrong interviewer, deliberately wrong.”
Wiles also blamed the persistence of the Epstein saga on members of Trump's Cabinet, noting that the president's pick of the FBI director, Kash Patel, had advocated for the release of all Justice Department files related to the investigation for many years. Despite Trump's claims that Clinton visited Epstein's private island, Wiles acknowledged, Trump is “wrong about that.”
Wiles added that Bondi had been “completely dismissive” about how she handled the Epstein files, an issue that has created a rift within MAGA.
“First he gave them folders full of nothing. And then he said the witness list, or the client list, was on his desk. There's no client list, and it sure wasn't on his desk,” Wiles said.
Wiles added that he read the investigative files on Epstein and acknowledged that Trump was mentioned in them, but said “he's not in the file doing anything horrible.”
Vance, who she said had been a “conspiracy theorist for a decade,” said he had joked with Wiles about conspiracies in private before praising her.
“I've never seen Susie Wiles say something to the president and then go to counter him or subvert his will behind the scenes. And that's what you want in an employee,” Vance told reporters. “I have never seen her be disloyal to the president of the United States and that makes her the best White House chief of staff the president could ask for.”
Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget whom Wiles described to Whipple as an “absolute right-wing fanatic,” he said in a social media post. that she is an “exceptional chief of staff.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying “The entire administration is grateful for her strong leadership and fully united behind her.”
Wiles told Vanity Fair that she would be happy to remain in office as long as the president wanted her to stay, noting that she has time to devote to work, being divorced and with her children away from home.
Trump had a troubled relationship with his chiefs of staff in his first term, four in four years. His longest-serving chief of staff, former Gen. John F. Kelly, served a year and a half.
