Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, has told Vanity Fair that Donald Trump believes “there’s nothing he can’t do, nothing, zero” as US president, in a series of strikingly unguarded interviews that cast an unvarnished light on his second administration. Wiles, who gave 11 interviews to author Chris Whipple, described Trump – who is teetotal – as having “an alcoholic’s personality”, a comparison she drew from her relationship with her late father, the broadcaster and NFL star Pat Summerall, who had alcoholism.
Wiles said Trump would pursue retribution against his political opponents when he saw an “opportunity”, and revealed she had forged a “loose agreement” with him to finish score-settling within the first 90 days of his presidency – a pledge the president did not keep. Indictments have since been served on New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey. “In some cases, it may look like retribution,” Wiles said. “Who would blame him? Not me.”
The chief of staff also expressed strong misgivings about Elon Musk, describing the billionaire entrepreneur as “an odd, odd duck” and saying she was “initially aghast” at his approach to slashing bureaucracy through the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency. She attributed a social media post in which Musk compared public sector workers to Stalin, Mao and Hitler to drug use, stating: “I think that’s when he’s microdosing.” Asked to elaborate, she said: “He’s an avowed ketamine [user].”
Wiles further revealed she had warned Trump against pardoning all 1,500 rioters involved in the January 6 2021 insurrection, acknowledging the FBI had done “an incredible job” in establishing guilt. However, she relented after Trump argued that even violent offenders had received disproportionately heavy sentences. “In every case, of the ones he was looking at, in every case, they had already served more time than the sentencing guidelines would have suggested,” she said.
Trump defended Wiles in an interview with the New York Post, saying: “No, she meant that I’m – you see, I don’t drink alcohol. So everybody knows that – but I’ve often said that if I did, I’d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic.” He added that he had not read the Vanity Fair piece, but claimed “the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.”
