Trump Chief of Staff Attacks Him and His Whole Team in Wild Interview |
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has a lot to say about Donald Trump’s inner circle, and not much of it is flattering, if any.
Wiles spoke to author Chris Whipple at different times throughout the first year of Trump’s second term as president, and her comments were published Tuesday by Vanity Fair. She had some choice words to describe the president and the people he has chosen to surround himself with.
For example, Wiles, who grew up with an alcoholic father, said that teetotaler Trump “has an alcoholic’s personality.” (This is a shocking statement given that Trump’s older brother died of alcoholism.)
Wiles added that Vice President JD Vance has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” making a “sort of political” conversion from being a Trump critic to a MAGA loyalist because of his Senate run in 2022. She described the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Project 2025 acolyte Russell Vought, as “a right-wing absolute zealot.”
Wiles said tech oligarch Elon Musk’s actions left her “aghast” and were not always “rational” in her view.
“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. When Musk claimed in an X post in March that Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions but their public-sector employees did, Wiles said, “I think that’s when he’s microdosing,” explaining that Musk is “an avowed ketamine” user. Wiles later denied commenting on Musk’s ketamine use to The New York Times, but Whipple played a recording for the newspaper, in which she is heard saying those words.
Regarding Attorney General Pam Bondi, Wiles said that she “completely whiffed” in handling the Epstein files, a big issue for Trump’s right-wing base.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said. “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.”
Wiles speaking candidly is surprising, and it remains to be seen if the fallout will affect her tenure at the White House. She’s already denying the comments, calling the Vanity Fair article a “hit piece.” Trump’s popularity levels are lower than ever, but she has been largely unscathed by negative media attention until now. Is her job in danger?
FBI Director Kash Patel enraged users on X after he appeared in a teaser for Katie Miller’s podcast, as the manhunt for the mass shooter at Brown University was still underway.
In a clip posted to X Monday evening, Patel sat laughing beside his country singer girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, as Miller, the wife of the White House’s ghoulish deputy chief of staff, peppered them with lighthearted questions about their relationship.
Although it wasn’t clear when this podcast was taped, X users quickly jumped into the comments to remind Patel that there was still a killer on the loose.
“This is pathetic and disgraceful. There is an ACTIVE manhunt going on and the head of the FBI is doing the podcast circuit with his girlfriend,” wrote AdameMedia, a political commentator who has amassed more than 465,000 followers on X.
“Personally, I’d rather see the director of the FBI catching criminals and putting them behind bars vs going on podcasts with his girlfriend,” wrote Michael Zimmermann, another political commentator from Texas.
“Hey no rush on solving the at large killer in my hometown,” wrote user Hayden, who writes about transit and has amassed more than 131,000 followers on X.
The post came on the heels of Patel once again prematurely announcing details about the FBI’s suspect in the shooting Saturday. Online, heat became so intense that Miller posted a follow-up post Tuesday: “This was taped prior to Sunday.” She gave no explanation of why she felt it was appropriate to share now.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles may have given up the game, admitting that the Trump administration’s strike on alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean Sea is an effort to bring about regime change in Venezuela, rather than a war on drug trafficking as the administration has said.
Wiles spilled this tidbit—and various others—during a series of surprisingly candid interviews with Vanity Fair, which were published on Tuesday.
“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” Wiles told Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple over lunch in November. “And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.”
What exactly does Maduro crying “uncle” entail? That verbiage offers itself more to a U.S.-backed coup rather than the new war on drugs that the administration claims (without proof) to be........