Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles says president ‘has an alcoholic’s personality’ and much more in candid interviews
President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, delivered a series of unusually candid and at times unflattering assessments of the president, his second-term agenda and some of his closest allies in a series of wide-ranging interviews with Vanity Fair.
Across more than ten interviews, Wiles spoke about working for Trump, saying the president “has an alcoholic’s personality,” despite being known as a teetotaler. Wiles said Trump governs with “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
“High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink,” she said. “And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.” The article notes she grew up with an alcoholic father – the legendary sportscaster Pat Summerall.
In the interviews, Wiles notably admitted there “may be an element of” political retribution in the prosecutions against his political opponents.
“I mean, people could think it does look vindictive,” she said in response to a question about the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey. “I can’t tell you why you shouldn’t think that.”
“I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it,” she added.
Wiles said she tried to persuade Trump to end his “score settling” within the first 90 days of his second term. That effort failed, she acknowledged, as his push for prosecutions continued, driven in part by the president’s desire for retribution.
When asked about the mortgage fraud accusations against New York Attorney General Letitia James, she replied, “Well, that might be the one retribution.”
Wiles also acknowledged that the president did not have evidence to support his accusation that former President Bill Clinton visited the private island of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“There is no evidence,” Wiles said of Clinton’s alleged visits. When Vanity Fair asked whether there was anything incriminating about Clinton in the files, she reportedly added, “The president was wrong about that.”
Wiles offering unflattering assessments of several of the president’s closest allies in the interviews. Of Vice President JD Vance, she said he has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” and suggested his evolution from Trump critic to loyal ally was “sort of political.”
On tech billionaire and former Trump ally Elon Musk, Wiles said he is “an avowed ketamine” user and “an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are.” His action to dismantle the US Agency of International Development (USAID), however, left her “aghast.”
Turning to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Wiles said she “completely whiffed” in her handling of the Epstein files.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi giving binders of materials on the case to a group of conservative influencers. “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 another striking comment, Wiles described Russell Vought, a co-author of Project 2025 and head of the Office of Management and Budget, as “a right-wing absolute zealot.”
Wiles also expressed policy reservations throughout the interviews. On deportations, she said the administration needed to “look harder” to avoid mistakes. On Venezuela, she said the president “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” adding, “and people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” She acknowledged that Trump would need congressional authorization to carry out strikes in Venezuela that he has recently been saying will come “soon.”
Wiles said she urged Trump not to pardon the most violent rioters from January 6, 2021, advice he ultimately ignored, and said she unsuccessfully pushed him to delay announcing major tariffs amid what she described as a “huge disagreement” among his advisers.
She also acknowledged she wants the president to focus more on the economy and less on Saudi Arabia, and weighed in on potential successors, distinguishing how figures such as Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to support Trump after initially opposing him.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on the release of these interviews.
