(CNN) — The White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, delivered a series of unusually candid and at times unflattering assessments of President Donald Trump, his second-term agenda and some of his closest allies in a series of wide-ranging interviews with Vanity Fair published Tuesday.
Across more than 10 interviews, Wiles spoke frankly about working for Trump, saying the president “has an alcoholic’s personality,” despite being known as a teetotaler. She acknowledged the president’s appetite for revenge, conceding many of his second-term actions were driven by a desire for retribution. Wiles suggested Trump was pursuing regime change in Venezuela through his boat-bombing campaign, contradicting official justifications for the strikes. And she described several controversial areas where the president ignored her advice, including on deportations and pardons.
The comments, made in conversations over the past year with author Chris Whipple, are striking both in candor and topic. Wiles — who claimed Tuesday that her words were taken out of context in a “hit piece” — is known inside the White House as a careful operator with few internal detractors, unlike the men who held the job in Trump’s first term. She has retained Trump’s confidence in part by running a functional West Wing that doesn’t attempt to constrain the president’s impulses.
Trump regularly refers to his top aide as the “most powerful woman in the world,” with the ability to influence global affairs in a single phone call. While she is a near-constant presence during his meetings and public appearances, her public remarks during Trump’s second term have been limited to a handful of friendly interviews.
Her low profile made her comments to Whipple, whose book “The Gatekeepers” is considered a seminal work on the chief of staff role, all the more striking.
Wiles said Trump governs with “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
“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.” The article notes she grew up with an alcoholic father — the legendary sportscaster Pat Summerall.
Trump shrugged off the assessment in an interview with the New York Post, saying he agreed he had a “possessive and addictive type personality.” He tamped down speculation Wiles’ job may be in trouble. “I didn’t read it, but I don’t read Vanity Fair — but she’s done a fantastic job,” Trump said.
In the interviews, Wiles notably admitted there “may be an element of” retribution in the prosecutions against Trump’s political opponents.
“I mean, people could think it does look vindictive,” she said in response to a question about the failed prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey. “I can’t tell you why you shouldn’t think that.”
“I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it,” she added.
Writing after the interviews published in Vanity Fair, Wiles said her words were taken out of 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 wrote on X. “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.”
In a separate statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie.”
“The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her,” Leavitt wrote.
Wiles, in her interviews with Whipple, described several times when her advice went unheeded.
When asked about the mortgage fraud accusations against New York Attorney General Letitia James, she replied, “Well, that might be the one retribution.”
Wiles also acknowledged that Trump did not have evidence to support his accusation that former President Bill Clinton visited the private island of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“There is no evidence,” Wiles said of Clinton’s alleged visits. When Vanity Fair asked whether there was anything incriminating about Clinton in the Epstein files, she reportedly added, “The president was wrong about that.”
Wiles offered unflattering assessments of several of the president’s closest allies in the interviews. Of Vice President JD Vance, she said he has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” and suggested his evolution from Trump critic to loyal ally was “sort of political.”
Vance acknowledged during a speech in Pennsylvania later Tuesday that he “sometimes” is a conspiracy theorist, but that he believes only “in the conspiracy theories that are true.” He defended Wiles, despite what he said were occasional disagreements.
“We agree on much more than we disagree,” he said. “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.”
On tech billionaire and former Trump ally Elon Musk, Wiles said he is “an avowed ketamine” user and “an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are.” His action to dismantle the US Agency for International Development, however, left her “aghast.”
Turning to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Wiles said she “completely whiffed” in her handling of the Epstein files.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi giving binders of materials on the case to a group of conservative influencers. “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.” (Bondi defended Wiles in an X post later Tuesday, calling her “my dear friend” and writing of the administration: “We are family. We are united.”)
In another striking comment, Wiles described Russell Vought, a co-author of conservative blueprint Project 2025 and head of the Office of Management and Budget, as “a right-wing absolute zealot.” (Vought later wrote on X that Wiles is his “ally” and an “exceptional” chief of staff.)
Wiles also expressed policy reservations throughout the interviews. On deportations, she said the administration needed to “look harder” to avoid mistakes. On Venezuela, she said the president “wants to keep on blowing boats up until [President Nicolás] Maduro cries uncle,” adding, “and people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” She acknowledged that Trump would need congressional authorization to carry out strikes in Venezuela that he has been saying will come “soon.”
Wiles said she urged Trump not to pardon the most violent rioters from January 6, 2021, advice he ultimately ignored, and said she unsuccessfully pushed him to delay announcing major tariffs amid what she described as a “huge disagreement” among his advisers.
She also acknowledged she wants the president to focus more on the economy and less on Saudi Arabia, and weighed in on potential successors, distinguishing how figures such as Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to support Trump after initially opposing him.
After the interviews published Tuesday morning, White House aides, advisers and allies of Trump were reeling at some of the brutally honest assessments.
“It’s in every group chat,” one Trump ally told CNN, adding, “Everyone is shocked and confused.
“Yikes,” a senior White House adviser said of the interview.
The interview prompted intense speculation in Trump circles, with one central question: Why would Wiles do this? Was she seeking revenge on someone? Was she on her way out? Was there some miscommunication with the journalist about which of her remarks were on the record and when they could be published?
Everyone agreed on this much: Wiles is one of the most calculated and strategic people in politics — and an interview like this would have to mean something.
One adviser noted that Wiles, in her X post, did not deny making the comments. Another said that every quote sounded like her voice.
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