White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said a Vanity Fair article, published Tuesday, is a “disingenuously framed hit piece” on her and the Trump administration.
Starting last January, Ms. Wiles engaged in 11 interviews with author Chris Whipple to share her views on the Trump White House, serving as a central observer and decision-maker.
Several hot-button comments were attributed to her in the piece, including saying President Trump was pushing to prosecute his political enemies as part of his desire for retribution.
Ms. Wiles also acknowledged that Mr. Trump was not telling the truth when he accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the private island of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
She also said Mr. Trump “has an alcoholic’s personality,” Vice President J.D. Vance “has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” Elon Musk is “an avowed ketamine user” and “an odd, odd duck” whose actions left her “aghast,” budget director Russell Vought is “a right-wing absolute zealot” and Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” in her handling of the Epstein files.
Ms. Wiles is pushing back on the article, saying her comments were taken out of context while others were omitted.
“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 was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the president in our team,” Ms. Wiles wrote in a statement on X.
“The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other president has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump whom I have been honored to work with for the better part of a decade,” the statement continued.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt quickly offered support on X, saying that Mr. Trump has “no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie.”
“The entire administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her,” Ms. Leavitt wrote.
In the magazine interviews, Ms. Wiles offered surprising assessments of the president and his team.
Ms. Wiles compared her work for Mr. Trump to growing up with her alcoholic father, NFL legend Pat Summerall.
“High-function 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.”
She went on to say that Mr. Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality” because he operates with “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing. Zero. Nothing.”
Mr. Trump famously does not drink alcohol.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation from the interviews was Ms. Wiles’ acknowledgement that Mr. Trump is “score settling” by targeting some of his political enemies for prosecution. The Trump Justice Department has brought criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, among others.
“We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” she told Mr. Whipple.
When that did not happen by August, she told him that “I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour” but was aiming at people who did “bad things” in coming after him.
“In some cases, it may look like retribution,” she said. “And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”
Ms. Wiles acknowledged that Ms. James was among the targets for retribution after winning a civil court verdict against Mr. Trump for a business fraud case with a penalty of nearly $500 million.
“Well, that might be the one retribution,” Ms. Wiles said, adding it was “not on her” to tell Mr. Trump to back off the case.
Ms. Wiles described her doubts in the interview about pardoning the most violent rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, which Mr. Trump did anyway. She also said she urged the president to delay his tariff announcement because of a “huge disagreement” among his advisers. And the administration needs to “look harder” at deportations to avoid mistakes.
Her criticism of Ms. Bondi, said to be one of her closest friends in the Trump administration, involved her early handling of the Epstein files, which Mr. Trump’s base had long pushed to release.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Ms. Wiles said. “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.”
Ms. Wiles also said Mr. Trump was “mighty unhappy” with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s decision to interview convicted Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell and that the president didn’t know she would be transferred to a minimum security prison camp.
“The president was ticked,” she said of the interview and transfer. “I don’t know why they moved her. Neither does the president.”
Some of Ms. Wiles’ harshest comments were reserved for Mr. Musk, who briefly led the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce staff and budgets at federal agencies. She said she suspected the SpaceX and Tesla CEO was “microdosing” when he shared a post saying Stalin, Mao and Hitler didn’t murder millions.
Asked what she meant by microdosing, Ms. Wiles responded, “He’s an avowed ketamine user.”
Mr. Musk has acknowledged trying the drug “years ago” but denied reports of more recent use.
