Susie Wiles: What to know about the US chief of staff and her bombshell Vanity Fair interviews

Donald Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles has hit out at Vanity Fair for publishing an article in which she was quoted as saying the president had an “alcoholic’s personality”.

The unusually candid interview also included quotes that paint an unflattering picture of vice president JD Vance and Elon Musk, who has heavily contributed to the Trump administration.

Ms Wiles, who is known to keep a low profile, claims her words have been taken out of context by the magazine, but hasn’t denied saying them.

Here are the main talking points from the lengthy interviews, a look at the response from Ms Wiles and Mr Trump – as well as everything you need to know about the chief of staff’s background.

What was revealed in the Vanity Fair interview?

The magazine published two articles on 16 December featuring quotes from 11 interviews Ms Wiles has given over the course of Mr Trump’s presidency.

She was quoted as suggesting Mr Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality”, although the president does not drink.

She made the comparison based on her experience with her late father, American footballer Pat Summerall, who was an alcoholic.

Ms Wiles said: “High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.”

Two quotes reference the idea of Mr Trump seeking retribution.

In March, she suggested she had spoken to Mr Trump about how his presidency was not supposed to be a “retribution tour” against those who he felt had wronged him.

“We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” she said.

In August, she denied he was on a retribution tour, but added: “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.”

She also appeared to call into question Mr Trump’s long-standing stance that Russian President Vladimir Putin can be persuaded to end the war in Ukraine if Kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian land in the eastern Donbas region.

“The experts think that if he could get the rest of Donetsk, then he would be happy,” Wiles said, referring to the region that is a key part of Donbas.

“Donald Trump thinks he wants the whole country,” she said.

Critical of Bondi’s handling of Epstein

Ms Wiles appeared to criticise Attorney General Pam Bondi over her handling of the Epstein files, saying she “completely whiffed” aspects of it by failing to manage the expectations of those waiting to see them.

In February, Ms Bondi told reporters that Epstein’s supposed client list was “sitting on my desk right now”, only to later claim there was no list, and that she had been referring to broader files.

A week later, she released “Phase 1” of the declassified Epstein files, which largely contained information that had already been leaked publicly.

Ms Wiles said she had given the public “binders full of nothingness”.

On Mr Trump’s previous claims that former president Bill Clinton frequented Epstein’s infamous island, Ms Wiles said there was “no evidence” those visits happened, adding: “The president was wrong about that.”

Offhand assessments of Trump’s inner circle

She said vice president JD Vance had been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and that his MAGA conversion – after he once compared Trump to Adolf Hitler – was “sort of political.”

She described Elon Musk, whose funding was integral to Mr Trump’s election campaign, as “a complete solo actor… an odd, odd duck” and an “avowed ketamine user”.

The billionaire, who briefly oversaw Mr Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has admitted to using prescribed ketamine to treat depression in the past.

She also suggested he had overstepped on his DOGE efforts, saying his gutting of USAID left her “initially aghast”.

“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, adding that “no rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody.”

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She recalled having to explain to him that “you can’t just lock people out of their offices” when he was making government workers redundant.

Ms Wiles labelled health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is known to buy into conspiracies, as “quirky Bobby”, and White House budget chief Russell Vought “a right-wing absolute zealot.”

She later praised Mr Kennedy Jr’s impact, alluding to her view of the administration’s hard-liners overall, saying: “He pushes the envelope – some would say too far. But I say in order to get back to the middle, you have to push it too far.”

What have Wiles and Trump said after the interviews?

In a statement on X, Ms Wiles claimed the magazine had published a “disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history”.

“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the president was left out of the story,” she said.

“I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the president and our team.

“The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other president has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honoured to work for the better part of a decade.”

Speaking to the New York Post, Mr Trump defended his chief of staff, saying he has made similar assessments about himself when it comes to having an “alcoholic’s personality”.

“I’ve said that many times about myself. I’m fortunate I’m not a drinker,” he said, adding he had an “addictive type personality”.

He said he hadn’t read the article, but added: “I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.”

He said he thought Ms Wiles had done “a fantastic job” in her role.

What is Susie Wiles’s role?

Susie Wiles was the first major appointment Mr Trump announced after his second election win, making her his White House chief of staff and closest adviser.

She is the first woman in history to take up the role, which is one of the most important non-elected posts in Washington.

She is responsible for directing, managing and overseeing all policy development, daily operations, and staff activities for the president.

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

Historically, those in the role have been seen as gatekeepers for the president, but Ms Wiles has pushed back on that, previously saying she wants the president to have “more inputs, not less”.

Speaking to Vanity Fair for its pieces on Ms Wiles, Mr Vance said she broke the mould of previous chiefs of staff by acting as “a facilitator” for Mr Trump, helping to “make his vision come to life”.

Daughter of an American footballer

Ms 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 attend 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.

She 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 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 the third time alongside Chris LaCivita.

After her appointment as chief of staff, 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.

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 in 2024, Mr Trump said: “She’s incredible. Incredible.”