Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff, criticizes Bondi and opines on
Trump in Vanity Fair
[December 17, 2025]
By MICHELLE L. PRICE, DARLENE SUPERVILLE and BILL BARROW
WASHINGTON (AP) — Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump’s understated but
influential chief of staff, criticized 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,” and Vice President JD Vance as a calculating
“conspiracy theorist.” 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.”
Wiles' candor was so unusual that Rahm Emanuel, who served as chief of
staff to former President Barack Obama, said that when he first read her
comments, he thought it was a spoof. He said he could not recall a chief
of staff giving such a candid interview, at least “not while you hold
the title.”
Emanuel said the role often involves public remarks that promote the
president’s agenda, but not sharing personal views about “everything,
everybody” in the White House.
His advice to Wiles: “Next time there’s a meal, bring a food taster.”
Candor from the ‘ice maiden’ who stays behind the scenes
The interviews with Vanity Fair were themselves uncharacteristic for
Wiles, who cut her reputation as someone who brought order to the
president's chaotic style and shunned the spotlight so much that at
Trump's 2024 election night victory party, she repeatedly shook her head
and avoided the microphone as Trump tried to coax her to speak to the
crowd.
“Susie likes to stay sort of in the back," said Trump, who has
repeatedly referred to her as the “ice maiden.”
Most members of his Cabinet, along with former and current White House
officials, posted statements praising Wiles and criticizing the media as
dishonest.
But neither Wiles nor the members of the administration who came to her
defense Tuesday disputed any details in the two-part profile, including
areas where she conceded mistakes and seemed to contradict the
administration's official reasoning for its bombing of alleged drug
boats in the waters off the coast of Venezuela.
Though the Trump administration has said the campaign is about stopping
drugs headed to the U.S., Wiles appeared to confirm that the campaign is
part of a push to oust Venezuela's authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro,
saying Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries
uncle.”
Wiles pushed back but without any denials
After the comments were published, Wiles disparaged it as 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
wrote in a social media post. “I assume, after reading it, that this was
done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the
President and our team.”
[to top of second column]
|
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles listens during a cabinet
meeting at the White House, April 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP
Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Trump, in an interview with the New York Post, said he was not
offended by Wiles' remarks, including her description of him as
someone with “an alcoholic’s personality” that she recognizes from
her father, the famous sports broadcaster Pat Summerall.
The president, who is a teetotaler and had a brother who struggled
with alcohol, said: "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.”
Vance, speaking in Pennsylvania on Tuesday about the president’s
economic agenda, said he hadn’t read the Vanity Fair piece. But he
defended Wiles and joked, “I only believe in the conspiracy theories
that are true.”
“Susie Wiles, we have our disagreements. We agree on much more than
we disagree, but I’ve never seen her be disloyal to the president of
the United States, and that makes her the best White House chief of
staff that I think the president could ask for,” Vance said.
He said his takeaway was that the administration “should be giving
fewer interviews to mainstream media outlets.”
The chief of staff criticizes the attorney general
Wiles, over the series of interviews, described the president behind
the scenes very much as he presents himself in public: an intense
figure who thinks in broad strokes yet is often not concerned with
the details of process and policy. She added, though, that he has
not been as angry or temperamental as is often suggested, even as
she affirmed his ruthlessness and determination to achieve
retribution against those he considers his political enemies.
Wiles described much of her job as channeling Trump’s energy, whims
and desired policy outcomes -- including managing his desire for
vengeance against his political opponents, anyone he blames for his
2020 electoral defeat and those who pursued criminal cases against
him after his first term.
On Epstein, Wiles told the magazine that she underestimated the
scandal involving the disgraced financier, but she sharply
criticized how Bondi managed the case and the public’s expectations.
Wiles criticized Bondi's handling of the matter, going back to
earlier in the year when she distributed binders to a group of
social media influencers that included no new information about
Epstein. That led to even more calls from Trump's base for the files
to be released.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the
very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi.
“First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said
that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is
no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
Bondi did not address the criticism when she released a statement
supporting Wiles.
Wiles also said at one point that Trump’s tariffs had been more
painful than expected. She conceded some mistakes in Trump’s mass
deportation program and suggested that the president’s retribution
campaign against his perceived political enemies has gone beyond
what she initially wanted.
___
Barrow reported from Atlanta.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
