Trump’s chief of staff goes wild in Vanity Fair article

On Tuesday, Vanity Fair published a two-piece exposé called: Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the “Junkyard Dogs”: The White House Chief of Staff on Trump's Second Term. The book includes dozens of quotes from Trump's Chief of Staff Susie Wiles – the person who journalist Chris Whipple calls “the most powerful person in Trump's White House other than the president himself”. Since the release of the article, Wiles has fought back against her own statements she is quoted as making in the article, claiming it is a “disingenuously framed hit piece”.

Significant context was disregarded, and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.

Susie Wiles, daughter of famed NFL player and sports commentator Pat Summerall, was hired as Trump's campaign manager in 2016 and has been Trump's Chief of Staff since his election in 2024. She is viewed as Trump's closest advisor. She has been working in politics since the 1980s, when she worked in the Reagan administration. This is the first time she has directly served the President of the United States.

Comments from the Vanity Fair article

In the two-part article, author Chris Whipple releases dozens of quotes from Wiles criticizing Trump, including the fact that she believes Trump “has an alcoholic's personality,” even though the President has reportedly been a teetotaler his entire life, even telling Fox News in 2016 that he had “never had a drink”. Wiles is also quoted as calling Vice-President JD Vance a “conspiracy theorist” and Russell Vought a “right-wing absolute zealot”.

Wiles is quoted talking about Trump's tantrums during his first election, “I've not seen him throw anything, I've not seen him scream. I didn't see that really horrible behavior that people talk about and that I actually experienced years ago.” The quote is referencing Trump's apparent good behaviour during his second successful election. Her comment about Trump's personality was not insinuating that he is an alcoholic but that his personality displays some of the markers as high-functioning alcoholics do (according to Wiles).

High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. 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. Nothing, zero, nothing.

Wiles outlined a moment during the 2016 election, where Trump reportedly berated her in front of a group of ‘cronies,' stating, “It was a horrific hour-plus at midnight. He was ranting and raving. And I didn't know whether to argue back or whether to be stoic. What I really wanted to do was cry.” According to Wiles, instead of crying, she chose to stand up to Trump and walk away from the attack. After that, “he called me every day.” Wiles steered Trump to victory against Hilary Clinton in 2016.

There are also comments from Wiles about the Epstein files. Wiles claims that Trump is in the files, but “he's not in the file doing anything awful”. She described Trump and Epstein as a pair of “young, single playboys together,” but still maintains that Trump was not a part of Epstein's crimes. While the comments made by Wiles are not explicitly critical of Trump, they certainly are not compared to the list of comments from GOP politicians criticizing Trump before his foray into politics.

Wiles refutes statements

According to Wiles in a statement on X, “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.” And “the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years”. The second of which is, of course, objectively false.