White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has been plunged into a PR nightmare of her own making after she divulged stunning details about Donald Trump and his top team.
Wiles, renowned in Washington for her tact, appears to have made an astonishing slip-up after she revealed that Trump has an ‘alcoholic’s personality‘.
In the wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair, she branded JD Vance a ‘conspiracy theorist’, ripped into Pam Bondi over the botched release of the Epstein files, and described Elon Musk as a ketamine-dependent oddball.
The intimate details were releasedover many months to journalist Chris Whipple who prefaced the piece by stating: ‘Most senior White House officials parse their words and speak only on background. But over many on-the-record conversations, Wiles answered almost every question I put to her.’
Despite Wiles’ vast experience, she even allowed the journalist to record conversations in the most intimate of settings, including ‘while she was doing her laundry in her Washington, DC, rental.’
In a frantic damage-control statement, Wiles wrote on X: ‘The article published early this morning is 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 added: ‘I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.’
‘The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history,’ Wiles posted on X after Vanity Fair articles based on her went viral
Wiles has been working with Trump for a decade. In the reports, Wiles ridicules the president, the vice president and other top Cabinet members
The twin articles featured dramatic individual portraits of Trump’s most trusted advisors, including Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and more.
They also featured color-coordinated group photos of the nation’s top officials posing side-by-side.
Clearly, the White House and its top officials wanted to go along with the article somehow, despite Wiles claiming it is a ‘hit piece.’
Trump responded to the furor by downplaying what Wiles had meant when she claimed he behaved arrogantly, like her alcoholic father.
‘No, she meant that I’m you see, I don’t drink alcohol. So everybody knows that but I’ve often said that if I did, I’d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic. I have said that many times about myself, I do. It’s a very possessive personality,’ Trump told the New York Post.
‘I’ve said that many times about myself. I’m fortunate I’m not a drinker. If I did, I could very well, because I’ve said that what’s the word? Not possessive possessive and addictive type personality. Oh, I’ve said it many times, many times before.’
The president’s response to the Vanity Fair piece shows the gravity of Wiles’ gaffe.
The chief of staff has been rallied around in the wake of its publication with coordinated statements issued by top cabinet secretaries, White House aides and even Republican senators.
They included Vance, Bondi, OMB Director Russ Vought, Kash Patel, Rubio and Marsha Blackburn.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt – who also posed up for pictures for Vanity Fair’s article – rushed out a statement praising Wiles as Trump’s most loyal member of staff.
‘Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has helped President Trump achieve the most successful first 11 months in office of any President in American history,’ she wrote.
‘President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie. The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.’
The odds of Wiles leaving the administration skyrocketed after the report was published.
Wiles has since called the Vanity Fair report a ‘hit piece’ and many top White House officials have rushed to her defense
On Tuesday morning, the odds that Wiles would be the first to leave the Trump Cabinet were at 4 percent; currently, the odds are 18 percent, according to Kalshi.
She’s the third most likely to leave the admin early, only behind Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, 20 percent, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, 28 percent.
Whipple did not immediately respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.
In the two-part series, Wiles slammed Elon Musk for allegedly ‘microdosing’ while posting on social media about Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
She also noted how eccentric he was while working for the president at DOGE, mentioning how he used to sleep in a sleeping bag under his desk and admitted to using drugs.
‘He’s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the EOB [Executive Office Building] in the daytime. And he’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person,’ she told Vanity Fair.
When pressed on her allegations about Musk’s drug use, Wiles denied having knowledge of the billionaire’s drug use, admitting ‘I don’t know.’
However, Whipple, the author, later played a recording of her allegation for the New York Times, which confirmed its authenticity.
‘The Susie Wiles interview seems like a major unforced error,’ communications executiveLulu Cheng Meservey reacted.
‘There was no need to get profiled for Vanity Fair. Her comments were uncharacteristically careless, and she came off as undermining the Administration’s messaging and belittling her boss.’
Wiles later admitted she does not know much about Musk’s alleged drug use
In addition, Wiles dished on controversial times for the White House’s inner circle, like how the Jeffrey Epstein files have roiled the admin’s top ranks. Trump, she said, was in the file.
‘[Trump] is in the file. And we know he’s in the file. And he’s not in the file doing anything awful,’ she said.
Wiles added that Trump ‘was on [Epstein’s] planehe’s on the manifest. They were, you know, sort of young, single, whateverI know it’s a pass word but sort of young, single playboys together.’
Still, Donald Trump Jr. and a slew of other sources close to the president, including Vance, stepped in to defend Wiles.
‘Susie Wiles is by far the most effective and trustworthy Chief of Staff that my father has ever had,’ he wrote on X.
Vance responded to questions about the piece: ‘I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true.’