United States President Donald Trump\u2019s chief of staff, who is known for operating from well behind the scenes, has suddenly come under the media spotlight as candid interviews with Vanity Fair magazine have stirred controversy.<\/p>\n
In the interviews, Susie Wiles was quoted as describing Trump as having an \u201calcoholic\u2019s personality\u201d, tech tycoon Elon Musk as an \u201codd, odd duck\u201d and Vice President JD Vance as a \u201cconspiracy theorist\u201d.<\/p>\n
Wiles slammed the two-part Vanity Fair article, which was published on Tuesday, calling it a \u201chit piece\u201d.<\/p>\n
Trump is standing by his top aide, whom he has called the \u201cice maiden\u201d, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: \u201cThe entire administration is \u2026 united fully behind her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here is a closer look at who Wiles is and what the report says:<\/p>\n
What is the basis of the Vanity Fair article?<\/h2>\n
Vanity Fair published a two-part report about the second Trump administration, which began in January. The report is based on the interviews with Wiles by American documentary filmmaker and journalist Chris Whipple over the course of the past year.<\/p>\n
Wiles chronicled the first year of Trump\u2019s second term \u201camid each moment of crisis\u201d, Whipple, who conducted 11 on-the-record interviews with Wiles, wrote.<\/p>\n
The first of these interviews took place on January 11, a week before Trump\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n Wiles, 68, is the chief of staff at the White House. She is the first woman in history to hold this position.<\/p>\n In 2015, Wiles was invited to Trump Tower in New York to meet Trump as he was transitioning from being a real estate developer to a presidential candidate.<\/p>\n In the Vanity Fair piece, Whipple described her as \u201cthe most powerful person in Trump\u2019s White House other than the president himself\u201d.<\/p>\n Whipple quoted an unnamed former Republican Party leader as saying: \u201cSo many decisions of great consequence are being made on the whim of the president. And as far as I can tell, the only force that can direct or channel that whim is Susie.\u201d<\/p>\n Wiles has risen from a Capitol Hill intern in the 1970s to a top Republican strategist. At the age of 23, she landed a job as a scheduler in the White House when Republican Ronald Reagan was president.<\/p>\n Wiles\u2019s childhood was difficult. Her father, Pat Summerall, a well-known American football announcer, was an alcoholic. She was raised in Stamford, Connecticut and Saddle River, New Jersey, according to the Vanity Fair article.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Wiles told Vanity Fair about Trump and his aides, and here is how some of them reacted:<\/p>\n According to the Vanity Fair report, Wiles said she never doubted Trump would win the presidential election in November 2024.<\/p>\n She added that she was going to present a \u201cnew Trump\u201d to the public and even told Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, before Trump\u2019s inauguration that he would see a different side of Trump in his second term. Trump would be calmer and without a temper, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve not seen him throw anything, I\u2019ve not seen him scream. I didn\u2019t see that really horrible behaviour that people talk about and that I actually experienced years ago,\u201d Whipple quoted Wiles as saying in his article.<\/p>\n Although Trump is a teetotaller, Wiles was quoted as saying Trump \u201chas an alcoholic\u2019s personality\u201d and he \u201coperates [with] a view that there\u2019s nothing he can\u2019t do. Nothing, zero, nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n In an interview with the New York Post published on Tuesday, Trump defended Wiles.<\/p>\n About the alcoholic comment, Trump said: \u201cShe meant that I\u2019m \u2013 you see, I don\u2019t drink alcohol. So everybody knows that, but I\u2019ve often said that if I did, I\u2019d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic. I have said that many times about myself. I do. It\u2019s a very possessive personality.\u201d<\/p>\n Talking about Whipple\u2019s report, Trump said, \u201cI didn\u2019t read it, but I don\u2019t read Vanity Fair, but [Wiles has] done a fantastic job.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided,\u201d the New York Post quoted Trump as saying.<\/p>\n Leavitt also backed Wiles during a Fox News appearance on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cI would just echo my boss, Susie Wiles, who is the best chief of staff in our nation\u2019s history, working for the greatest president in our nation\u2019s history,\u201d Leavitt said. \u201cThis was, unfortunately, another attempt at fake news by a reporter who was acting disingenuously and really did take the chief\u2019s words out of context.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reporter omitted all of the positive things that Susie and our team said about the president and the inner workings of the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n Wiles said the vice president went from opposing Trump to fully supporting him mostly for political reasons. She also described Vance as being into conspiracy theories for about 10 years.<\/p>\n Vance, who also said he had not read the Vanity Fair article, backed Wiles during an address in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know why I really love Susie Wiles? Because Susie is who she is in the president\u2019s presence [and] she\u2019s the same exact person when the president isn\u2019t around,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Wiles also expressed opinions about billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, CEO of the private space exploration company SpaceX and the electric car company Tesla.<\/p>\n During the first few months of Trump\u2019s second term, Musk was his close aide, overseeing the Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was meant to slash US government bureaucracy. DOGE became known for carrying out mass layoffs of federal government workers and abruptly shutting down the US Agency for International Development (USAID).<\/p>\n Wiles described Musk as a \u201csolo actor\u201d, telling Whipple that \u201cthe challenge with Elon is keeping up with him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the EOB [Executive Office Building] in the daytime. And he\u2019s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it\u2019s not helpful, but he is his own person,\u201d Wiles was quoted in the Vanity Fair article as saying.<\/p>\n Musk has not publicly reacted to the article. In March, he posted on X \u2013 formerly known as Twitter, the social media platform he bought in 2022 \u2013 saying, \u201cI\u2019m a big fan of Susie Wiles,\u201d in response to a video of him helping Wiles out with a bag.<\/p>\n When Trump named Wiles his chief of staff after winning the November 2024 election, Musk posted a screenshot of news about the announcement and wrote: \u201cSusie Wiles is great.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In the interview, Wiles also criticised Attorney General Pam Bondi\u2019s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The wealthy convicted paedophile died by suicide in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell. Epstein was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.<\/p>\n Conspiracy theorists claim, however, that he might have been murdered because he maintained a secret client list of powerful individuals, including politicians, who allegedly abused underage girls. In July, the US Department of Justice, which Bondi heads, concluded that Epstein had no client list.<\/p>\n The Justice Department memo angered right-wing conspiracy theorists and a section of the US president\u2019s base of supporters because it was seen as a retreat from a narrative once promoted by members of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n When Bondi was asked in an interview with Fox News in February about a supposed list of Epstein\u2019s clients, she responded: \u201cIt\u2019s sitting on my desk right now to review.\u201d<\/p>\n The same month, political commentators and far-right influencers were invited to the White House and presented with documents called \u201cThe Epstein Files: Phase 1\u201d. Bondi released these documents, which did not contain anything revelatory about the Epstein case.<\/p>\n Whipple wrote that Wiles said Bondi \u201ccompletely whiffed\u201d on understanding that the conservative influencers she invited to the White House were exactly the audience most interested in the documents.<\/p>\n Wiles was quoted as saying Bondi gave the influencers \u201cbinders full of nothingness\u201d. Wiles emphasised: \u201cThere is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn\u2019t on her desk.\u201d<\/p>\n On January 6, 2021, thousands of rioters, fuelled by false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, stormed the US Capitol to try to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden\u2019s victory over Trump.<\/p>\n More than 2,000 people broke into the seat of the US Congress, vandalised offices and fought with police, leaving at least five people dead and many injured.<\/p>\n About 1,270 people were convicted of federal crimes over the riot, and their prison sentences ranged from a few years to more than two decades for leaders of far-right groups.<\/p>\n On the day he was inaugurated for his second term, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1,500 people who were convicted or indicted in the riots, calling their treatment \u201coutrageous\u201d.<\/p>\n Wiles told Whipple that she questioned Trump pardoning all 1,500.<\/p>\n She was quoted in Vanity Fair as saying: \u201cI said, \u2018I am on board with the people that were happenstancers or didn\u2019t do anything violent. And we certainly know what everybody did because the FBI has done such an incredible job.’\u201d<\/p>\n She added that Trump asserted that even the violent offenders were unfairly treated.<\/p>\n Wiles said she was \u201caghast\u201d when she learned USAID had been shut down.<\/p>\n \u201cI think anybody that pays attention to government and has ever paid attention to USAID believed, as I did, that they do very good work,\u201d she was quoted as saying by Whipple.<\/p>\n![\"wiles\"](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-16T201710Z_1883679187_RC20UHAFL3GM_RTRMADP_3_USA-TRUMP-USAID-WILES-1765985704.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
Who is Susie Wiles?<\/h2>\n
What did Wiles say about Trump and his aides?<\/h2>\n
Trump<\/h3>\n
JD Vance<\/h3>\n
Elon Musk<\/h3>\n
Pam Bondi<\/h3>\n
What was Wiles\u2019s\u00a0 opinion on other issues?<\/h2>\n
Trump\u2019s January 6 pardons<\/h3>\n
The USAID shutdown<\/h3>\n
Attacks on alleged drug boats<\/h3>\n