White House chief of staff Susie Wiles got candid in an interview with Vanity Fair published Tuesday about members of the Trump administration — including the president himself — who she said believes there's nothing he can't do.
President Donald Trump "has an alcoholic’s personality" and "operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing," Wiles told the magazine, though she later criticized the piece as "disingenuously framed."
"Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say. But 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," she told Vanity Fair.
Wiles' father, the late sportscaster Pat Summerall, was an alcoholic, and she helped her mother stage an intervention to help him get treated. Summerall was sober for 21 years before he passed away.
Vanity Fair also reported that Wiles said Vice President JD Vance had been "a conspiracy theorist for a decade." The report said she said Vance's support for Trump — after previously criticizing him — was "sort of political."
Chris Whipple, who wrote the article and interviewed Wiles, said he spoke to her in March about immigration.
"I will concede that we’ve got to look harder at our process for deportation," Wiles told Whipple, who said she made the comment after the U.S. deported Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. The White House said at the time that they were members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang living illegally in the U.S.
"If somebody is a known gang member who has a criminal past, and you’re sure, and you can demonstrate it, it’s probably fine to send them to El Salvador or whatever," Wiles said, according to Whipple. "But if there is a question, I think our process has to lean toward a double-check."
Wiles rejected Vanity Fair's reporting in a post on X on Tuesday.
"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. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team," she wrote.
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt added in a statement, "Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has helped President Trump achieve the most successful first 11 months in office of any President in American history. 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."
