White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles revealed internal tensions in the Trump administration over issues from immigration enforcement to government downsizing in comments published by Vanity Fair on Tuesday that paint an unflattering picture of the role played by some of President Donald Trump’s close aides.
In a series of 11 interviews with author Chris Whipple conducted over Trump’s first year back in office, Wiles, the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, described the teetotaling president as having “an alcoholic’s personality” and an eye for vengeance against perceived enemies
.She also said Vice President JD Vance has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and described his shift from Trump critic to supporter as “sort of political,” motivated by his Senate campaign rather than principle.
She took aim at the way billionaire Elon Musk dismantled the US Agency for International Development and how Attorney General Pam Bondi initially responded to the planned release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
According to the interviews, Wiles also said she warned Trump against pardoning the most violent participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and pressed him to delay his decision on sweeping trade tariffs, but was unable to change his mind in either case. She said the administration should have applied greater scrutiny to the deportation of immigrants in the country illegally to avoid errors.
“He has an alcoholic’s personality,” Wiles said of Trump, explaining that her upbringing with an alcoholic father prepared her for managing “big personalities.” Trump does not drink, she noted, but operates with “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
In a post on X, Wiles called the Vanity Fair story “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history,” saying it omitted important context and selectively quoted her to create a negative narrative.
