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Tag: susie wiles

  • VP Vance: “Sometimes I Am A Conspiracy Theorist, But I Only Believe In Conspiracy Theories That Are True”

    Vice President J.D. Vance on Tuesday

    , addressing the label during an economic speech at Uline Inc. in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Vance said he sometimes embraces “crazy” conspiracies, citing that masking toddlers was foolish and that the media worked to cover up former President Joe Biden’s mental decline.

    JACOB BOGAGE, WASHINGTON POST: Vice President Jacob Bogage from the Washington Post, it’s good to see you.

    VICE PRESIDENT VANCE: Good to see you too.

    BOGAGE: Merry Christmas.

    VANCE: Thank you. Same to you.

    BOGAGE: Unfortunately, I have to ask a bit of an off-topic question from Affordability because news events do intervene, and that is the interviews that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles gave to Vanity Fair, in which she’s quoted as referring to you as, excuse me, and again, not my word, sir, but a conspiracy theorist of a decade and described your transformation from someone who once opposed President Trump to now his vice president as an act of political expediency. And I’d like to give you the chance to respond to that, sir.

    VANCE: Well, first of all, if Susie, like, I’ll trust what you said. I haven’t looked at the article. I, of course, have heard about it.

    But conspiracy theorists, sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true. And by the way, Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time. For example, I believed in the crazy conspiracy theory back in 2020 that it was stupid to mask three-year-olds at the height of the COVID pandemic, that we should actually let them develop some language skills.

    I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job. And I believed in the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was trying to throw his political opponents in jail rather than win an argument against his political opponents. So, at least on some of these conspiracy theories, it turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it.

    And that’s that’s my understanding. Now, look, I do want to say something about Susie, though, because, again, having not read this article, Susie is a person I’ve come to know very, very well. And, you know, a lot of you probably ask yourself, what is it like behind the scenes?

    What’s going on actually behind the scenes of the Trump administration? And I’ll tell you, the president is exactly in private who he is in public. Like, I’ll tell you a little story.

    A few, maybe actually a week or so ago, I walk into the Oval Office and Marco and I are sitting there talking with the president about something. He says, stop. And he looks at our shoes and says, you guys have terrible shoes.

    So he goes and gets a shoe catalog. And remember, this is the Christmas season. So the president’s got some holiday cheer.

    He goes to get the shoe catalog and gets his favorite shoes and orders like four pairs of shoes for me and four pairs of shoes for Marco, because he’s like, you know, we need our vice president or secretary of state to look their very best. And, you know, then we went back to talking about whatever major international issue we were talking about. Again, he is exactly in private who he is in public.

    That’s not true of most people in Washington, D.C. It’s not. And I’ve seen so many people who will say one thing to the president’s face, Democrats and Republicans, and then will do the exact opposite behind the scenes. You know why I really, you know what they are.

    And you know why I really love Susie Wiles, because Susie is who she is in the president’s presence. She’s the same exact person when the president isn’t around. I’ve never seen Susie Wiles say something to the president and then go and counteract him or subvert his will behind the scenes.

    And that’s what you want in a staffer, because as much as I love Susie, the American people didn’t elect any staffer. They elected the president of the United States. And what you want and what you want in a staffer is a person who understands they are there to effectuate the will of the American people, and they’re there to follow the orders of the duly elected commander-in-chief of the United States.

    And Susie Wiles, we have our disagreements. We agree on much more than we disagree. But I’ve never seen her be disloyal to the president of the United States, and that makes her the best White House chief of staff that I think the president could ask for.

    And the last thing I’ll say is if any of us have learned a lesson from that Vanity Fair article, I hope that the lesson is we should be giving fewer interviews to mainstream media outlets. So with that lesson internalized, I’m going to stop taking questions and just leave you with one final note.

    And again, it’s just a note of gratitude. This is the coolest job I’ve ever had. Agree with us or disagree with us. I’m sure that every single person in this room made something happen to get me to this job. You went out there and voted. Maybe you persuaded one of your relatives to vote.

    Maybe you even volunteered or knocked on doors or made phone calls for us. I will never forget that my job every single day is to make it so that you guys can have a safe and prosperous life in this country that all of us love.

    Vice President Vance, Allentown

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  • White House defends Chief of Staff Susie Wiles after tell-all

    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 stinging judgments of the president and blunt assessments about his administration’s shortcomings.

    The profile of Susie Wiles, Trump’s reserved, influential top aide since he resumed office, caused a scandal in Washington and prompted a crisis response from the White House that involved nearly every single figure in Trump’s orbit issuing a public defense.

    In 11 interviews conducted over lunches and meetings in the West Wing, Wiles described early failures and drug use by billionaire Elon Musk during his time in government and mistakes by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in her public handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Wiles also acknowledged that Trump had launched a retribution campaign against his perceived political enemies.

    “I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution,” Wiles told Chris Whipple, the Vanity Fair writer who has written extensively on past chiefs of staff, “but when there’s an opportunity, he will go for 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 the Vanity Fair tell-all’s publication Tuesday, Wiles and key members of Trump’s inner circle mounted a robust defense of her tenure, calling the story a “hit piece” that left out exculpatory context.

    “The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history,” Wiles said in a post on X, her first in more than a year. “Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story.”

    The profile was reported with the knowledge and participation of other senior staff, and illustrated with a photograph of Wiles and some of Trump’s closest aides, including Vance, Bondi and advisor Stephen Miller.

    The profile revealed much about a chief of staff who has kept a discreet profile in the West Wing, continuing her management philosophy carried through the 2024 election when she served as Trump’s last campaign manager: She let Trump be Trump. “Sir, remember that I am the chief of staff, not the chief of you,” 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 an enabler. I’m also not a bitch. I try to be thoughtful about what I even engage in,” Wiles said. “I guess time will tell whether I’ve been effective.”

    Despite her passive style, Wiles shared concern over Trump’s initial approach to tariff policy, calling the levies “more painful than I had expected.” She had urged him, unsuccessfully, to get his retribution campaign out of the way within his first 90 days in office, in order to enable the administration to move on to more important matters. And she had opposed Trump’s blanket pardon of Jan. 6 defendants, including those convicted of violent crimes.

    Wiles also acknowledged the administration needs to “look harder at our process for deportation,” adding that in at least one instance mistakes were made when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested and deported two mothers and their American children to Honduras. One of the children was being treated for Stage 4 cancer.

    “I can’t understand how you make that mistake, but somebody did,” she said.

    In foreign policy, Wiles defended the administration’s attack on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and said the president “wants to keep on blowing up boats up until [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro cries uncle,” suggesting the goal is to seek a change of governments.

    As Trump has talked about potential land strikes in Venezuela, Wiles acknowledged that such a move would require congressional authorization.

    “If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then [we’d need] Congress,” she said.

    In one exchange with Whipple, she characterized Trump, who abstains from liquor, as having an “alcoholic’s personality,” explaining that “high-functioning alcoholics, or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink.”

    He “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” she said.

    But Trump, in an interview with the New York Post, defended Wiles and her comments, saying that he would indeed be an alcoholic if he drank alcohol.

    “She’s done a fantastic job,” Trump said. “I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer — purposely misguided.”

    Wiles also blamed the persistence of the Epstein saga on members of Trump’s Cabinet, noting that the president’s chosen 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 “completely whiffed” on how she handled the Epstein files, an issue that has created a rift within MAGA.

    “First she gave them 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,” Wiles said.

    Wiles added that she has read the investigative files about Epstein and acknowledged that Trump is mentioned in them, but said “he’s not in the file doing anything awful.”

    Vance, who she said had been a “conspiracy theorist for a decade,” said he had joked with Wiles about conspiracies in private before offering her praise.

    “I’ve never seen Susie Wiles say something to the president and then go and counteract him or subvert his will behind the scenes. And that’s what you want in a staffer,” Vance told reporters. “I’ve never seen her be disloyal to the president of the United States and that makes her the best White House chief of staff that the president could ask for.”

    Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget whom Wiles described to Whipple as a “right-wing absolute zealot,” said in a social media post that she is an “exceptional chief of staff.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the “entire administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”

    Wiles told Vanity Fair that she would be happy to stay in the role for as long as the president wanted her to stay, noting that she has time to devote to the job, being divorced and with her kids out of the house.

    Trump had a troubled relationship with his chiefs of staff in his first term, cycling through four in four years. His longest-serving chief of staff, former Gen. John F. Kelly, served a year and a half.

    Michael Wilner, Ana Ceballos

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  • Susie Wiles’s Big Slip Is a Test of Her Power

    Susie Wiles and the Boss.
    Photo: Eric Lee/The Washington Post/Getty Images

    For all the chaos the second Trump administration has generated, it appears to be remarkably calm at its center, thanks largely to Susie Wiles. The current White House chief of staff differs dramatically from her four first-term predecessors precisely because of the lack of drama surrounding her. There have been relatively few leaks, high-level resignations, or credible reports of internal turmoil in the second Trump White House despite Donald Trump’s impulsiveness and the menagerie of outlandish characters in his orbit.

    Considering her powerful role in the administration, it’s remarkable how much Wiles has kept herself out of the spotlight. Axios’s description of her at the beginning of Trump 2.0 has rung true:

    Incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles tells Axios in an interview that she aims for the West Wing to be a no-drama zone for staff. If that works, it won’t be the chaotic den of self-sabotaging that stymied the early days of President-elect Trump’s first term.

    “I don’t welcome people who want to work solo or be a star,” Wiles, whose boss calls her the Ice Maiden, said by email. “My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.”

    It’s intensely ironic, then, that Wiles is the source for the first explosive media exposé of the internal dynamics of this White House. On Monday, Vanity Fair published an article by Chris Whipple, the author of a book on White House chiefs of staff, who interviewed Wiles 11 times in the past year. While much of the material presents Wiles as a defender of the president’s motives, agenda, operating style, and historical significance, this paragraph has put her in a world of potential trouble:

    One time we spoke while she was doing her laundry in her Washington, DC, rental. Trump, she told me, “has an alcoholic’s personality.” Vance’s conversion from Never Trumper to MAGA acolyte, she said, has been “sort of political.” The vice president, she added, has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.” Russell Vought, architect of the notorious Project 2025 and head of the Office of Management and Budget, is “a right-wing absolute zealot.” When I asked her what she thought of Musk reposting a tweet about public sector workers killing millions under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, she replied: “I think that’s when he’s microdosing.” (She says she doesn’t have first-hand knowledge.)

    There are other problematic excerpts disclosing Wiles’s low opinion of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files; her indulgent attitude toward her “junkyard dog” deputies, Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino, and James Blair; and her efforts to convince Trump himself to put a rein on his pursuit of personal vendettas.

    Tellingly, in her initial public comment on the Whipple article, Wiles did not contradict any of the specifics but simply denounced it as a “hit piece” in which “significant context was disregarded” and lots of positive stuff she said about the president and his team was “left out of the story.” It’s a classic non-denial denial.

    It’s unclear at this early juncture whether Wiles is in any trouble with Trump. But his initial reaction was to defend her “alcoholic’s personality” remark.

    “No, she meant that I’m — you see, I don’t drink alcohol. So everybody knows that — but I’ve often said that if I did, I’d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic. I have said that many times about myself, I do. It’s a very possessive personality,” Trump told the New York Post.

    The explosiveness of Wiles’s comments immediately reminded veteran political observers of a parallel moment early in Ronald Reagan’s presidency, as the New York Times notes:

    The off-script comments felt reminiscent of a similar episode in President Ronald Reagan’s first term when his budget director, David A. Stockman, likewise gave a series of interviews to what was then called The Atlantic Monthly with candid observations that caused a huge stir.

    Stockman was famously “taken to the woodshed” by White House chief of staff James Baker for revealing to the world the backstory of the struggle within and beyond the White House over Reagan’s highly controversial initial budget and tax proposals, which among other things depicted the well-meaning 40th president as being manipulated by his underlings. But the incident really wasn’t much like the one we are witnessing now. In his interviews, Stockman was mostly talking about intense policy disagreements within the administration and the Republican Party. Wiles doesn’t much engage with policy arguments; her interviews make it clear she shares some of Trump’s most controversial policy initiatives (particularly the assault on the deep state) while leaning over backward to rationalize his current warmongering toward Venezuela. And for all her casual slurs about Team Trump, she refers, incredibly, to his inner circle as “a world-class Cabinet, better than anything I could have conceived of.”

    Stockman, moreover, was a huge celebrity in the early days of the Reagan administration and a living symbol of his domestic agenda; Wiles was a noncelebrity until now and apparently had no idea her talks with Whipple would create a stir, notes the Times:

    While Mr. Stockman kept his interviews secret from the White House (and nearly got fired), the broader Trump team cooperated with Vanity Fair. Mr. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave interviews and along with top aides like Stephen Miller and Karoline Leavitt posed for glamour photographs by Christopher Anderson.

    So the question now is whether Susie Wiles can go back to being a noncelebrity and dismiss her indiscretions as the product of a quietly malicious writer trying to disrupt the calm at the center of the White House. If she does survive this furor without significant damage to her position, then we’ll know she is even more powerful than anyone realized.


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    Ed Kilgore

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