Trump chief Susie Wiles talks Epstein, tariffs, Musk, Bondi

President Donald Trump has an “alcoholic personality” and has been waging legal “punishment” against his enemies since returning to office, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in a series of extremely candid remarks. interviews with Vanity Fair It was published on Tuesday.

Wiles said in March that he and Trump “had a loose understanding that the showdown would be over before the first 90 days were up.”

Nearly five months later, she initially denied that Trump was “on a revenge tour” and suggested he was motivated by removing “people who do bad things” from government.

But he admitted: “In some cases it can look like revenge. And there can be an element of that at times.”

And he said the administration’s attempt to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is overseeing a business fraud case against Trump and is seen as one of his most maligned political enemies, “may be the only punishment.”

The lawsuit against James on mortgage fraud charges was dismissed in November after a judge ruled that Trump’s chosen prosecutor was invalidly appointed. The Justice Department has so far failed to persuade subsequent grand juries to reindict him.

Wiles’ eyebrow-raising remarks came during 11 interviews with author Chris Whipple during Trump’s first year back in the White House.

Wiles, who wields unparalleled influence and power in Trump’s orbit, operates mostly behind the scenes. But in his meetings with Whipple, he made outspoken statements and occasionally criticisms of many of the administration’s top officials.

These officials include Trump himself.

Wiles, the father of former New York Giants shortstop Pat Summerall who has been described as an alcoholic and absentee parent, said his difficult upbringing made him “a bit of an expert on big personalities.”

Trump doesn’t drink alcohol, but he has an “alcoholic personality” because he runs a “business”. [with] “His view is that there’s nothing he can’t do,” Wiles told Whipple. “Nothing, zero, nothing.”

He also talked about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering behind some of Trump’s biggest agenda items, including his global “reciprocal” tariff policy.

Trump’s imposition of tariffs in early April, which he commemorated as America’s “Liberation Day,” was the product of Wiles’ divided White House, which could not agree on the impact of the policy.

“That’s what I call thinking out loud,” Wiles said in an interview at the time, recalling that he urged advisors who were skeptical of the tariff plans to get on board, but “they just couldn’t get there.”

Wiles pushed back on Vanity Fair’s report in an X post later Tuesday morning, calling it “a disingenuously framed hit piece about me, the best President in history, the White House staff, and the Cabinet.”

“Important context was ignored, and much of what I and others said about the team and the President was left out of the story. After reading it, I assume this was done to paint an extremely chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team,” he wrote.

He added that he was “honoured” to have worked for Trump for almost a decade and said: “None of this will stop our relentless quest to Make America Great Again!”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt added in a statement to CNBC that Wiles “helped President Trump have the most successful first 11 months of any President in American history.”

“President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie. The entire administration is grateful for her steady leadership and fully united behind her,” Leavitt said. he said.

Whipple also reported that Wiles said Vice President J.D. Vance, a onetime Trump critic who has become a prominent figure in the MAGA movement, had “some sort of political” motivation to change his perspective.

He said Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, the author of the government reform guide known as Project 2025, is “an absolute right-wing bigot.”

Wiles, meanwhile, said he was “completely satisfied” with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s early handling of government records related to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump has said in the 2024 campaign that he would support declassifying files on federal investigations of Epstein, a well-connected money manager who died in prison in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges. But the Trump administration later said it had decided no further clarification was necessary, sparking outrage from many MAGA supporters.

Wiles said Bondi, who gave folders containing old information labeled “Epstein Files: Phase 1” to a group of conservative influencers in February, failed to understand that those people were “the targeted group that cared about this.”

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

As for Elon Musk, Tesla’s and SpaceX chief Wiles, who briefly led Trump’s controversial government-slaying group known as DOGE, accused him of being “clear ketamine” [user]” and “ the weird, odd duck that I think geniuses are.”

DOGE said it was “initially appalled” when Musk moved to disband the United States Agency for International Development, which he claimed was rife with fraud.

“I think everyone who was interested in government and interested in USAID believed, as I did, that they were doing very good work,” he said.

“Elon’s attitude is that you have to get the job done fast. If you’re an incremental guy, you can’t take your rocket to the moon,” Wiles said. “And with that attitude you will break the porcelain. But no reasonable person can think that the USAID process is a good process. No one.”