Trump’s chief of staff Wiles pulls back curtains of White House in revealing interviews

Susie Wiles, US President Donald Trump’s understated but influential chief of staff, criticised Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and offered an unvarnished take on her boss and those in his orbit in interviews published Tuesday in Vanity Fair that sent the West Wing into damage control.

The startlingly candid remarks from Wiles, the first woman to ever hold her current post, included describing the president as someone with “an alcoholic’s personality”, Vice-President J.D. Vance as a calculating “conspiracy theorist” and Elon Musk as an “avowed” ketamine user. The observations from Wiles, who rarely speaks publicly given the behind-the-scenes nature of her job running the White House, prompted questions about whether the chief of staff might be on her way out.

Wiles pushed back after the piece’s publication, describing it as a “hit piece” that lacked context, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the “entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her”.

As for Trump, he told the New York Post that he hadn’t read the piece. When asked if he retained confidence in Wiles, he said, “Oh, she’s fantastic”.

Trump also agreed that he does have the personality of an alcoholic, describing himself as having “a very possessive personality”.

A senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal thinking, dismissed the notion that Wiles might leave because of the profile, saying if they were rattled by negative news coverage “none of us would work here”.