U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles, widely regarded in Washington as the quiet power behind the throne, spoke candidly about some of the administration’s shortcomings and delivered a frank assessment of the people around the president in a rare, wide-ranging series of interviews published Tuesday by Vanity Fair.
Speaking to writer Chris Whipple, Wiles sounded off on Elon Musk’s drug use, seemed to question Vice-President JD Vance’s conversion to the Trump camp, said the president’s tariffs have been “more painful than expected,” suggested Trump is not done with his assault on Venezuelan boats and said some of the legal action he’s taken against his foes could be seen as a form of “retribution.”
In a post on X, her first in more than a year, Wiles called the article a “disingenuously framed hit piece.”
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” she wrote.
Trump, meanwhile, has since said Wiles said nothing he hasn’t already said about himself publicly.
Wiles has “done a fantastic job,” he told the New York Post, while calling Whipple “a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.”
Here are five notable things that came from Wiles’s 11 interviews.
‘Alcoholic’s personality’
Wiles is known as something of a Trump whisperer but conceded he’s an imposing figure who’s hard to wrangle at times. She said Trump, who does not drink, has an “alcoholic’s personality.”
“High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink,” Wiles, the daughter of a hard-drinking former professional football player, told Whipple.
“And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities,” she said, and Trump “operates with a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
She said her leadership style is effectively letting Trump be Trump, while steering him in what she thinks is the right direction, when necessary. “I’m not an enabler. I’m also not a bitch. I try to be thoughtful about what I even engage in. I guess time will tell whether I’ve been effective.”
While largely deferential to Trump, Wiles made some eyebrow-raising remarks about other officials.
She seemed to question the initial sincerity of Vance’s transformation from a never-Trumper to the avowed acolyte he is now — an about-face that happened as he was trying to win a Senate seat in Trump-friendly Ohio.
“I think his conversion was a little bit more, sort of political,” she said, contrasting Vance’s change of heart with that of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who she said is “not the sort of person that would violate his principles.”
She accused Vance of being “a conspiracy theorist for a decade” — a comment she made while discussing disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein — but she defended his actions during that now-infamous February standoff with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy.
“I wouldn’t say JD snapped, because he’s too controlled for that. But I think he’d just had enough.”
Wiles was critical of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who she suggested has bungled the Epstein files, causing a political headache for the administration when Trump seemed to go back on his word to release what the government has on the late financier.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi, referring to MAGA-supporting influencers who had seized on the issue.
Wiles said she’s reviewed the Epstein case and there’s nothing damaging in those files about Trump, who had a friendship with the man years ago.
“[Trump] is in the file. And we know he’s in the file. And he’s not in the file doing anything awful,” Wiles said.
Musk’s alleged drug use
As for Musk, who was briefly Trump’s point-man on “government efficiency,” Wiles said he routinely uses the drug ketamine and it’s a challenge “keeping up with him.”
“He’s an avowed ketamine [user],” Wiles said. “He’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person.”
Wiles said she was taken aback by Musk’s slash-and-burn approach to USAID, which was radically downsized during his brief tenure.
His approach to the foreign aid agency was “shut it down, fire everybody, shut them out, and then go rebuild. Not the way I would do it,” she said.
Tariffs ‘more painful’ than expected
Trump has long said his favourite word is “tariff,” and he made it no secret in the last presidential campaign he planned to impose levies on goods coming into the U.S. to supposedly bolster American manufacturing.
But Wiles said there was initially a lot of pushback to the so-called “reciprocal” tariff scheme Trump drew up and hastily announced back in April.
She said Trump’s announcement with that large poster board listing stunningly high tariff rates on some countries was “thinking out loud.”
The tariffs, which ranged from 10 to 100 per cent, were a lot higher than Wall Street was expecting and that announcement sent markets into a tailspin.
“There was a huge disagreement over whether [tariffs were] a good idea,” Wiles said, suggesting that advisers were sharply divided with some saying they would be a panacea while others said they could be disaster.
Polls suggest American voters are seized with inflation and the cost of living, which have been affected by Trump’s tariffs on products from Canada and elsewhere.
“It’s been more painful than I expected,” Wiles said.
Venezuelan strikes to continue
Trump has been leading a lethal campaign against Venezuelan boats that are allegedly carrying drugs to the U.S. — there have been 25 such strikes resulting in the death of some 100 people so far.
Wiles said Trump is convinced Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is effectively a drug cartel leader.
She said Trump wants Maduro to pay for what drug dealers in his country have unleashed on the U.S.
“He wants to keep on blowing up boats until Maduro cries uncle,” Wiles said.
Some observers have interpreted Wiles’s comment as a signal Trump is intent on regime change in Venezuela.
U.S. officials to this point have said blowing up the boats is about drug interdiction, not about running Maduro out of office.
Trump’s retribution
Trump has effectively directed justice officials to pursue criminal charges against people who targeted him for prosecution in his first term and thereafter.
Wiles said she forged a “loose agreement” with Trump to stop after three months — something that so far hasn’t panned out.
“I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution,” Wiles said of Trump. “But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”
“In some cases, it may look like retribution. And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”
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