White House chief of staff Susie Wiles listens as President Donald Trump meets with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, Feb. 4, 2025, in Washington.Evan Vucci/AP
Hours after a Vanity Fair piece in which President Donald Trump’s chief of staff made a series of damaging, on-the-record remarks about the president, his policies, and allies, Susie Wiles appears to be attempting damage control.
“A disingenuously framed hit piece,” she said on X, claiming that it had been “done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.
But in disavowing the piece, Wiles did not specify which parts she took issue with. Nor did she deny or refute any of the many, oftentimes disparaging remarks she told Vanity Fair over the course of 11 interviews.
Condé Nast did not immediately respond to Mother Jones‘ request for comment on Wiles’ complaint.
The embarrassing remarks include Wiles’ assessment that Trump, who doesn’t drink and whose older brother died of complications of alcoholism, “has an alcoholic’s personality.”
Wiles also had choice words for other members of the Trump administration. She called Elon Musk an “avowed” ketamine user who slept in a sleeping bag in the Executive Office Building during the day. US Attorney General Pam Bondi? “Completely whiffed” on the Epstein Files, Wiles told the magazine, referring to Bondi’s handling of the Epstein investigation. As for Vice President JD Vance, Wiles claims that he’s been a “conspiracy theorist for a decade.”
Wiles’ candor also extended to Trump’s policies and legal actions, calling Charlie Kirk’s assassination the catalyst for Trump’s campaign of revenge and retribution against his perceived political enemies. Wiles also claimed shock when Musk, who led DOGE as a “special government employee,” shut down USAID. (The decision has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande.)
The two-part interview has since prompted speculation that Wiles could be planning her own exit from the White House amid tanking approval ratings and growing GOP dissent. Still, prominent people in the Trump administration condemned the interview and defended Wiles—including FBI Director Kash Patel, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.
