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 first term in office have been limited to a handful of friendly interviews.
The 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.
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