Who is Susie Wiles, America’s first ever female chief-of-staff?

Published

10 months ago

November 8, 2024

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Donald Trump has named Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff in his first major appointment as president-elect.

She will be the first female in history to take up the role – one of the most important non-elected posts in Washington.

In his victory speech, Mr Trump described her as an “ice maiden” and has credited her with his “best-run” campaign.

Here’s what we know about her so far.

Daughter of American footballer

Susie Wiles grew up in New Jersey. Her father was the late American footballer Pat Summerall.

Before his death in 2013, he credited her with helping him get sober and checking in to an alcohol rehab programme.

“I hadn’t been there much for my kids,” he wrote in his memoir. “But Susan’s letter made it clear that I’d hurt them even in my absence.”

Ms Wiles’s first job in politics was in the 1970s as an assistant to the late Jack Kemp, who became a Republican representative for New York after playing alongside her father at the New York Giants.

The now 67-year-old was later part of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign and subsequently worked as a White House scheduler during his term.

Following the Reagan administration, in 1988 she worked on the vice-presidential campaign for George H W Bush’s deputy Dan Quayle.

Having moved to Florida, she worked as an adviser to two Jacksonville mayors.

Outside politics she has worked in the private sector as a lobbyist, for both Ballard Partners, whose clients include Amazon, Google, and the MLB (Major League Baseball), and then Mercury, who works with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the Embassy of Qatar.

On her appointment to the Trump team, Mercury chief executive Keiran Mahoney said: “This is great news for the country. Susie has been a valued colleague. We are all proud of her and wish her the best.”

From DeSantis to Trump

In recent years, Ms Wiles has worked for some of the Republicans’ more divisive figures.

After helping Rick Scott become governor of Florida in 2010, she worked on Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign there.

With the Sunshine State win credited with helping Mr Trump take the White House, Ms Wiles was brought in to help Ron DeSantis’s ailing campaign to replace Mr Scott as governor in 2018.

The pair are reported to have fallen out after he was elected, which was seemingly confirmed when Ms Wiles was in charge of Mr Trump’s 2024 bid. Mr DeSantis was up against Mr Trump in the primaries, but was widely ridiculed and forced to pull out early on.

It was later claimed that Ms Wiles was behind some of the media stories that made fun of Mr DeSantis.

‘Ice maiden’

Although unsuccessful, Mr Trump credited Ms Wiles with being an “integral” part of his second presidential bid in 2020.

She was co-manager of his effort this year alongside Chris LaCivita.

After her appointment this week, he described her as the “perfect pick” with a “master ability to manage multiple things of significance simultaneously”.

During the campaign, she also lobbied for the tobacco company Swisher International.

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Throughout her decades-long political career, Ms Wiles has stayed out of the limelight and scarcely engaged with the media.

Speaking to the Tampa Bay Times in 2016, she hit back at criticism of Mr Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric.

“I will tell you this: The Donald Trump that I have come to know does not behave that way, and the lens that I look at him through, I don’t see any of that. I see strengths, I see smarts, I see a work ethic that is unparalleled,” she told the newspaper.

She is believed to have been behind the campaign material that targeted Latino and black voters, who were key in taking votes from the Democrats.

At a rally in Milwaukee earlier in the year, Mr Trump said: “She’s incredible. Incredible.”

US

Donald Trump says he wants to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un again – as soon as ‘this year’

Published

2 days ago

August 26, 2025

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Donald Trump says he wants to meet North Korea's Kim Jong Un again - as soon as 'this year'

Donald Trump has said he wants to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again.

Speaking at the White House as he held talks with the new South Korean president Lee Jae Myung, Mr Trump told reporters: “I’d like to meet him this year… I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future.”

“I’d like to have a meeting. I got along great with him,” President Trump said, adding they “became very friendly” during his first term in office.

“We think we can do something in that regard,” he said, adding that he would like to help the relationship between the two Koreas.

Mr Trump and Mr Kim held three meetings between 2018 and 2019 during Mr Trump’s first term and exchanged a number of, what the president called, “beautiful” letters.

In June 2019, Mr Trump briefly stepped into North Korea from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) with South Korea.

The US president on Monday responded to a question about whether he would return to the DMZ by fondly recalling the last time he did so.

“Remember when I walked across the line and everyone went crazy?” especially the Secret Service, Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

But “I loved it”, Mr Trump said. He added he felt safe because he had a good relationship with Mr Kim.

Mr Trump became the first sitting American president to set foot on North Korean soil six years ago.

However, little progress was made in curbing North Korea’s nuclear programme, and Mr Trump acknowledged in March this year that Pyongyang is a “nuclear power”.

Kim possible: Is Trump seeking another ‘Hermit Kingdom’ handshake?

It was Donald Trump’s first meeting with the new president of South Korea.

A highly unconventional platform for glowing words about the North Korean one.

He said he got along “great” with Kim Jong Un and would like to meet him again “this year”.

The US president’s renewed interest in North Korea appears less about policy and more about theatrics.

The historic image of President Trump stepping on to North Korean soil in 2018 gave him global headlines.

The timing is curious – North Korea has been busy polishing its nuclear credentials and vowing not to disarm without serious concessions.

In other words, Pyongyang is holding the same cards it held four years ago, only now they’re shinier.

But Trump seems eager to revive his image as the only US president bold, or brash, enough to break bread with the ruler of the “Hermit Kingdom”.

Supporters call it visionary diplomacy; critics call it reality TV masquerading as foreign policy.

Either way, President Trump clearly sees value in the spectacle.

Whether Kim Jong Un does is another story.

Since Mr Trump’s first-term meetings with Mr Kim ended, North Korea has shown no interest in returning to talks.

The White House said in June that Mr Trump would welcome communications with Mr Kim.

The attempts at rapprochement come after the election in South Korea of Mr Lee, who has pledged to reopen dialogue with North Korea.

As a gesture of engagement in June, Mr Lee suspended South Korean loudspeakers blasting music and messages into the North at the DMZ along their shared border.

Analysts say, however, that engaging North Korea will likely be more difficult for both Mr Lee and Mr Trump than it was in the president’s first term.

Since then, North Korea has significantly expanded its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

And it has developed close ties with Russia through direct support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, with Pyongyang providing both troops and weaponry.

Mr Kim told Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country will always stand with Moscow, state media reported in June.

US

Lil Nas X pleads not guilty after being charged with assaulting police officer

Published

2 days ago

August 26, 2025

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Lil Nas X pleads not guilty after being charged with assaulting police officer

US rapper Lil Nas X has pleaded not guilty after being charged with assaulting a police officer while walking in downtown Los Angeles in his underwear.

The musician, real name Montero Lamar Hill, was taken to hospital and arrested after police responded to reports of a naked man shortly before 6am on Thursday.

The district attorney’s office said on Monday that Lil Nas X faces three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and one count of resisting an executive officer.

He was being held on a $75,000 (£55,457) bail, conditional on attending drug treatment. It is not immediately clear whether he had posted it and been released yet.

He is set to return to court on 15 September for his next pre-trial hearing.

During the hearing on Monday, Hill’s lawyer Christy O’Connor told the judge he had led a “remarkable” life, adding: “Assuming the allegations here are true, this is an absolute aberration in this person’s life.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to him.”

A law enforcement source told Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, on Thursday that the Old Town Road and Industry Baby hitmaker punched an officer twice in the face during the encounter.

The source added officers were unsure whether he was on any substances or in mental distress.

NBC News cited TMZ footage where Hill was seen walking down the middle of Ventura Boulevard at 4am on Thursday in a pair of white briefs and cowboy boots.

In the videos, Hill tells a driver to “come to the party” in one clip and in another tells the person: “Didn’t I tell you to put the phone down?”

“Uh oh, someone’s going to have to pay for that,” Hill says as he continues to walk away.

In some clips, Hill struts as if he’s on a catwalk, posing for onlookers, and at one point he places an orange traffic cone on his head.

US

Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Man wrongly deported from US to El Salvador detained by ICE again

Published

2 days ago

August 26, 2025

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Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Man wrongly deported from US to El Salvador detained by ICE again

A man who was wrongly deported from the US to El Salvador has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) again.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old originally from El Salvador, handed himself into the ICE field office in Baltimore, Maryland, for a check-in on Monday.

The visit was a mandatory condition of his release from federal custody earlier this weekend. However, in a court filing on Saturday, his lawyers said they expected Garcia would be detained again upon attending.

Garcia is charged in an indictment, filed in federal court in Tennessee, with conspiring to transport illegal immigrants into the US.

According to a court filing by his lawyers, immigration officials made an offer to Garcia to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for pleading guilty to the charges.

Otherwise, they would seek to deport him to Uganda.

Speaking at a news conference outside the ICE office on Monday morning, Garcia said via a translator: “This administration has hit us hard, but I want to tell you guys something: God is with us, and God will never leave us.

“God will bring justice to all the injustice we are suffering.”

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Garcia’s lawyers, also said: “There was no need to take him into ICE detention… the only reason they took him into detention was to punish him.”

A judge later ruled Garcia could not be deported after he filed a challenge asking to be allowed due process to fight any removal attempt.

Judge Paula Xinis ruled the 30-year-old must remain detained in the US until she can hold an evidentiary hearing – set for Wednesday.

She added there appeared to be “several grounds” for her to have jurisdiction to exercise relief, including that Uganda has not agreed to offer Garcia protections, such as being able to walk freely, being given refugee status, and not being re-deported to El Salvador.

After initially being detained in Maryland – where he lived with his American wife and children – by ICE in March, Garcia was sent to El Salvador, where he was then imprisoned in the country’s maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).

This was despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order granting him protection from deportation after finding he was likely to be persecuted by local gangs if he was returned to his native country.

The Trump administration admitted deporting Garcia was an “administrative error”, but said at the time they could not bring him back as they do not have jurisdiction over El Salvador.

After eventually returning him to the US in June, the Trump administration detained Garcia on criminal charges that were filed in May.

The criminal indictment alleges Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the US illegally and transport them from the border to other destinations in the country.

Minutes after his release on Friday, officials notified Garcia they intended to deport him to Uganda.

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, US President Donald Trump, vice president JD Vance and other officials claim Garcia was a member of MS-13 – an international criminal gang formed by immigrants who had fled El Salvador‘s civil war to protect Salvadoran immigrants from rival gangs.

Garcia’s lawyers strongly deny the claims.