White House chief of staff Susie Wiles reflected on President Donald Trump’s second term in a series of interviews for a two-part profile published Tuesday by Vanity Fair, speaking candidly about key players in the administration who have influence over the president and some of the administration’s more controversial policies.
Wiles, 68, spoke to Vanity Fair writer Chris Whipple, an expert on White House chiefs of staff, 11 times over the past year about a range of issues, including the administration’s Venezuela strategy and efforts to slash the size of the federal government.
She said that Trump “has an alcoholic’s personality,” despite the fact that Trump does not drink alcohol, making a comparison to her father, television sportscaster Pat Summerall, who she said suffered from alcoholism.
“Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say. But high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink,” Wiles said. “And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.” She added that Trump “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
Trump responded to her comment in an interview Tuesday with the New York Post, in which he defended Wiles, saying she has “done a fantastic job.”
“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. I have said that many times about myself, I do. It’s a very possessive personality,” the president said.
Trump added: “I’m fortunate I’m not a drinker. If I did, I could very well, because I’ve said that — what’s the word? Not possessive — possessive and addictive type personality. Oh, I’ve said it many times, many times before.”
Wiles, who Vanity Fair reported had a live feed of Trump’s Truth Social posts playing on a freestanding video monitor in her office, originally planned to serve as his chief for six months, the publication said. “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,” she said.
Wiles said confidently that Trump won’t run for a third term even though he has floated it occasionally. “He knows he can’t run again,” she said, adding that the 22nd Amendment makes it “pretty unequivocal” and said Trump has said as much to her.
After the interviews were published, Wiles denounced the story on X as “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.” She said “significant context was disregarded” and it was “done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”
Trump speaks with Wiles during a roundtable discussion in the State Dining Room of the White House in June.Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images file
Reached for comment about the interviews, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt praised Wiles in a statement: “Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has helped President Trump achieve the most successful first 11 months in office 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 united fully behind her.”
Here are some more highlights from the Vanity Fair profile:
Wiles says Trump is not on a ‘retribution tour’
While speaking in March about Trump’s efforts to target his perceived political enemies, Wiles told Whipple that she would tell the president that he isn’t supposed to engage in a retribution tour. “We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” she said at the time.
In August, Wiles told Whipple: “I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour. A governing principle for him is, ‘I don’t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else.’ And so people that have done bad things need to get out of the government. 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.”
Trump’s health is ‘great’
As Trump, 79, has faced questions over his health, especially about why he underwent a magnetic resonance imaging test in October, Wiles said the president’s health is “great.” The White House only recently disclosed that the MRI was of Trump’s cardiovascular system and abdomen, with the president’s physician saying the imaging was “perfectly normal.”
Wiles also dismissed recent claims that the president was falling asleep in Cabinet meetings, behavior seemingly shown publicly on camera.
“He’s not asleep. He’s got his eyes closed and his head leaned back … and, you know, he’s fine,” she said.
Blowing up boats ‘until Maduro cries uncle’
Wiles defended Trump’s military operations in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, targeting boats originating from Venezuela and allegedly carrying drugs. The operations expanded last week to the U.S. seizure of an oil tanker near the South American country.
“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” she said, referring to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. “And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.”
“The president believes in harsh penalties for drug dealers, as he’s said many, many times. … These are not fishing boats, as some would like to allege,” she said, adding that stopping the vessels is saving lives. “The president says 25,000. I don’t know what the number is. But he views those as lives saved, not people killed.”
Wiles claimed Trump doesn’t currently need congressional approval to carry out the attacks at sea. “Don’t need it yet,” she said, adding that the administration is “very sure we know who we’re blowing up” and citing CIA intelligence. U.S. actions on Venezuela’s mainland, however, would require congressional approval, she conceded to the publication.
A vessel just before a U.S. strike in the eastern Pacific on Nov. 15.U.S. Southern Command
Wiles says Pam Bondi ‘completely whiffed’ in initial handling of Jeffrey Epstein files
Wiles said she has read what she calls “the Epstein file” and said while Trump is in it, he’s “not doing anything awful.” She said Trump and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were “young, single playboys together.”
Wiles disputed Trump’s statements about former President Bill Clinton and Epstein, saying, “There is no evidence” that Clinton visited one of Epstein’s islands as many as 28 times, as Trump has claimed. She also said Trump’s claim that there is anything incriminating about Clinton in the files was inaccurate.
“The president was wrong about that,” Wiles said.
The administration faces a deadline Friday to release the government’s files on Epstein due to a law Trump signed last month.
Wiles also said she thought Attorney General Pam Bondi initially erred in her handling of the files amid calls among Trump’s base for their release.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles told Vanity Fair. “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
In a February interview with Fox News, Bondi said that she had a list of Epstein’s clients “sitting on my desk right now to review.”
But after the Justice Department and FBI said in July that a review of the Epstein case files had found no client list, Bondi told White House reporters that she was actually referring to Epstein-related files.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on Wiles’ remarks about Bondi.
The attorney general wrote on X that her “dear friend” Wiles fights to advance Trump’s agenda “with grace, loyalty, and historic effectiveness.”
“Any attempt to divide this administration will fail,” she said, adding, “We are family.”
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein in a photo released by the House Oversight Committee. House Oversight Committee
Wiles calls Vance ‘a conspiracy theorist’
Wiles said FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino “really appreciated what a big deal” the Epstein files were, “Because they live in that world. And the vice president, who’s been a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”
Wiles added that Vance, who was initially a critic of Trump, changed his mind about the president during his Senate campaign.
Asked by Vanity Fair about Vance’s transformation on Trump, Wiles said: “His conversion came when he was running for the Senate. And I think his conversion was a little bit more, sort of political.”
Whipple said when he asked Vance in November about becoming a Trump loyalist, the vice president said: “I realized that I actually liked him, I thought he was doing a lot of good things. And I thought that he was fundamentally the right person to save the country.”
During an event Tuesday in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Vance was asked by a reporter about Wiles’ comment that he was a conspiracy theorist, and he answered, “Sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true.”
Defending Wiles, Vance added: “And you know why I really love Suzy Wiles? Because Suzy is who she is in the president’s presence, she’s the same exact person when the president isn’t around. I’ve never seen Suzy Wiles say something to the president and then go and counteract him or subvert his will behind the scenes.”
Donald Trump, Elon Musk and JD Vance attend the Army-Navy football game on Dec. 14, 2024, in Landover, Md.Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images file
Wiles talks about Musk’s role in the administration
Wiles also spoke to Vanity Fair about billionaire Elon Musk and his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, which gutted wide swaths of the federal government.
“The challenge with Elon is keeping up with him,” Wiles told Vanity Fair. “He’s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the EOB [Executive Office Building] in the daytime. And he’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person.”
Asked about Musk reposting a tweet about public sector workers killing millions under Hitler, Stalin and Mao, the publication reported that Wiles said, “I think that’s when he’s microdosing,” and also noted she said she didn’t have first-hand knowledge of any drug use by Musk.
Musk has said in a post to X in May that he tried prescription ketamine a few years ago, but was not taking drugs now.
Asked by The New York Times about her comment to Vanity Fair, Wiles disputed the quotation about Musk’s drug use.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said, according to the Times. “I wouldn’t have said it and I wouldn’t know.”
The Times, however, reported that Whipple played it an audio recording that confirmed Wiles’ comment about Musk.
Wiles also told Vanity Fair she was “initially aghast” when Musk dismantled the United States Agency for International Development. “Because I think anybody that pays attention to government and has ever paid attention to USAID believed, as I did, that they do very good work,” she said.
Wiles said, “When Elon said, ‘We’re doing this,’ he was already into it. And that’s probably because he knew it would be horrifying to others. But he decided that it was a better approach to shut it down, fire everybody, shut them out, and then go rebuild. Not the way I would do it.”
Musk did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
