White House defends chief of staff Wiles after tell-all profile

WASHINGTON— President Trump’s chief of staff is defending himself after giving a series of extraordinarily candid interviews to Vanity Fair in which the president offered harsh judgments about himself and frank assessments of his administration’s shortcomings.

The profile of Susie Wiles, Trump’s reserved, effective top aide since his reinstatement, caused scandal in Washington and prompted a crisis response from the White House that prompted public defenses from nearly every figure in Trump’s orbit.

Inside 11 interviews In his speech, held during lunches and meetings in the West Wing, Wiles talked about Elon Musk’s early failures and drug use during his time in government, as well as the Lawyer’s mistakes. In her public handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, General Pam Bondi acknowledged that Trump had launched a revenge campaign against those he viewed as political enemies.

“I don’t think he wakes up thinking about revenge,” Wiles told Vanity Fair writer Chris Whipple, who has written extensively about past chiefs of staff, “but when an opportunity presents itself, he’ll take it.”

Wiles also touched on missteps in the administration’s crackdown on immigrants, contradicted Trump’s claim about Epstein and former President Clinton, and described Vice President J.D. Vance as a “conspiracy theorist.”

Just hours after Vanity Fair’s tell-all was published Tuesday, Wiles and key members of Trump’s inner circle mounted a staunch defense of his tenure, calling the story a “hit piece” that left out exculpatory context.

“The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece about me and the best President, White House staff and Cabinet in history,” Wiles said in a post on X, his first in more than a year. “Important context was ignored, and much of what I and others said about the team and the President was left out of the story.”

The profile was reported with the knowledge and participation of other senior staff and was illustrated with a photo of Wiles as well as some of Trump’s closest aides, including Vance, Bondi and adviser Stephen Miller.

The profile reveals much about a chief of staff who maintains an undercover profile in the West Wing and continues the governing philosophy he carried through the 2024 election, when he served as Trump’s last campaign manager: He let Trump be Trump. He recalled telling the president, “Sir, remember that I am the chief of staff, not your chief.”

Trump has publicly emphasized how much he values ​​Wiles as a reliable aide. He did this at a rally last week and called her “Susie Trump.” In an interview with Whipple, he said he had difficult conversations with Trump every day, but he fought his own battle.

“So no, I’m not an enabler. I’m also not a bitch. I try to be thoughtful about even what I’m dealing with,” Wiles said. “I guess time will tell if I’m effective or not.”

Despite his passive style, Wiles shared concerns about Trump’s initial approach to tariff policy, calling the tariffs “more painful than I expected.” He had unsuccessfully called for the administration to put aside its revenge campaign within his first 90 days in office to allow him to move on to more important issues. And he opposed Trump’s Jan. 6 blanket pardons of defendants, including those convicted of violent crimes.

Wiles also acknowledged that the administration should have “looked more carefully at our deportation process,” adding that in at least one instance, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers made mistakes in arresting and deporting. two mothers and their American children To Honduras. One of the children was being treated for stage 4 cancer.

“I can’t understand how you made this mistake, but someone did,” he said.

On foreign policy, Wiles defended the administration’s attack on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, saying the president “wants to keep blowing up the boats.” [Venezuelan President Nicolás] “Maduro is crying uncle,” he says, suggesting that the ultimate goal is to seek regime change.

While Trump talked about potential ground strikes in Venezuela, Wiles acknowledged that such a move would require congressional authorization.

“If he authorized an activity on land, then it is war, then [we’d need] “Congress,” he said.

In a conversation with Whipple, he described Trump, who abstained from drinking, as having “an alcoholic personality” and explained that “high-functioning alcoholics, or alcoholics in general, have their personalities exaggerated when they’re drinking.”

He “operates [with] the view that there is nothing he cannot do. “Nothing, zero, nothing,” he said.

However, Trump defended Wiles and his comments in an interview with the New York Post, saying that if he drank alcohol he would actually become an alcoholic.

“He did a great job,” Trump said. “From what I heard, the facts were wrong and the interviewer was very misguided, deliberately misled.”

Wiles also blamed Trump’s own Cabinet members for continuing the Epstein saga, noting that the president-elect FBI director Kash Patel had advocated for many years for the release of all Justice Department files related to the investigation. Despite Trump’s claims that Clinton visited the private island of the disgraced financier and convicted sexual abuser, Wiles acknowledged that Trump was “wrong about that.”

Wiles added that Bondi “totally smelled” Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files, an issue that created a rift within MAGA.

“First he gave them files full of nothing. Then he said he had the witness list or the client list on his desk. He doesn’t have the client list and it sure wasn’t on his desk,” Wiles said.

Wiles stated that he read the investigation files about Epstein and accepted that Trump was mentioned in these documents, but “the file does not indicate that he did anything bad.”

Vance, who he said has been a “conspiracy theorist for a decade,” said he joked privately about conspiracies before praising Wiles.

“I’ve never seen Susie Wiles say something to the president and then go and contradict him or subvert his will behind the scenes. And that’s what you want in a staffer,” Vance told reporters. “I have never known him to be disloyal to the president of the United States, and that makes him the best White House chief of staff the president could ask for.”

Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, whom Wiles called Whipple “an absolute right-wing fanatic” he said in a social media post. that he was “an extraordinary chief of staff.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in question “The entire administration is grateful for his steady leadership and is fully united behind him.”

Wiles told Vanity Fair that he would be happy to stay in the post as long as the President wanted him to stay, noting that he had time for work, being divorced, and being away from home with his children.

Trump had a rocky relationship with his chiefs of staff during his first term, going through four terms in four years. The longest-serving chief of staff, former Gen. John Kelly, served for a year and a half.