đȘTrump Worldâs reaction to "SusieGate" tells you all you need to know about Susie Wilesâ power
SCOOP: Trump allies showed up at the White House as the orbit rallied behind her and the president said he didn't care about the bombshell story.
On Tuesday morning, around 7 a.m., SUSIE WILES was in her standard morning briefings when CHRIS WHIPPLEâs Vanity Fair bombshell sent her and the entire White House into a tizzy.
The deep dive by the author of âThe Gatekeepers,â a 2017 book about White House chiefs of staff, dished out eye-popping quotes from an unusually candid Wiles. In it, the presidentâs chief of staff â renowned for her professionalism â appeared to question some of the presidentâs decisions while dinging some Cabinet members and advisors.
Wiles, Iâm told, was âpretty upsetâ and felt blindsided. While the author said the quotes were from 11 on-the-record interviews she gave him throughout Trumpâs first year back in the White House, Wiles and her team felt the ground rules hadnât been clear â and that the remarks were taken out of context.
It also didnât quite add up to people who know her well: While known for her candor â part of the reason the president trusts her â Wiles has always been a savvy, behind-the-scenes operator who loathes the spotlight and would fall on a sward before allowing herself to trigger a negative newscycle for her boss.
But what happened after is whatâs most revealing. Within hours, the long tail of Wilesâ power and deep relationships across Trump World whipped into a rescue mission. Without so much as a summons, longtime allies from the campaign trail and others inside her orbit cleared their schedules and showed up at the White House to ask how they could help, Iâm told from multiple sources. During a huddle in the West Wing, a fire crackling in Wilesâ office, they set to work on a damage-control plan to push back on the story as unfair â and activated the entire Cabinet.
All day, MAGA figures and Cabinet secretaries alike took to social media to defend Wiles and deride the story as a âhit pieceâ with âcherry-pickedâ quotes taken out of context. DONALD TRUMP JR. reminded the world about how Wiles stood with his dad when most in the party considered him a pariah after Jan. 6. Her co-captain on the 2024 campaign, CHRIS LaCIVITA, humorously tried to redirect reportersâ attention to RYAN LIZZAâs latest essay about his rift with OLIVIA NUZZI and RFK. Even COREY LEWANDOWSKI, who was notoriously sidelined during the campaign for undercutting Wileâs leadership, called her âincredibly giftedâ and the story âtrash.â
More telling: Those who Wiles appeared to criticize in the story stood with her. While Wiles told the reporter that fellow Floridian PAM BONDI had âcompletely whiffedâ in her handling of the JEFFREY EPSTEIN situation, the Attorney General took to X to say her âdear friendâ Wiles âfights every day to advance President Trumpâs agenda â and she does so with grace, loyalty, and historic effectiveness.â
Office of Management and Budget chief RUSSELL VOUGHT â whom Wiles in the interview called âa right-wing absolute zealotâ (though, letâs be honest, he prob took that as a compliment!) â tweeted that she was an âexceptional chief of staff.â
And Vice President JD VANCE â whom Wiles suggested was a former âconspiracy theoristâ who may have made some political calculations in converting from Never Trump to diehard MAGA â defended her, calling her âthe best White House Chief of staff that, I think, the President could ask for.â
âThatâs called circling the motherfucking wagons,â as one Wiles loyalist and Trump ally told me tonight. âIf you look at the reaction on the Hill, if you look at MAGA World and all the people who rallied behind her in a period of eight hours, it shows the depth of loyalty to the president. It shows the depths of loyalty to the chief of staff.â
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While everyone fell in line quickly â and Washington D.C. melted down on social media â the reaction of one man mattered more than anyone. The president and Wiles had a private conversation on Tuesday, Iâm told. And while the details of that one-on-one remain unclear, I hear from others who spoke to him that he was âunfazedâ by the story.
Known, himself, for impetuously oversharing â just Monday, Trump was taking heat even from Republicans for his callous reaction to ROB REINERâs murder at the hands of his drug-addicted son â Trump told aides he didnât care about the story.
Then he took a call from a New York Post reporter and gave a full-fledged endorsement of his chief, even backing Wilesâ perhaps unfortunate description of him as having an âalcoholicâs personality.â
âI didnât read it... but sheâs done a fantastic job,â Trump said. âI think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.â
After that, as far as anyone in the administration who matters was concerned, the controversy was over.
âAt the end of the day, the audience of one doesnât give a shit âand, therefore, it doesnât fucking matter,â the aforementioned Wiles loyalist/Trump ally told me tonight.
The swift rally behind Wiles demonstrates just how much power she has amassed in the presidentâs orbit â and the goodwill sheâs built over the years, even as sheâs had to check and counter other Trump World figures jockeying for power. While some Republicans were privately muttering that the seasoned operator somehow made a ârookie mistakeâ â or questioned what on earth she was thinking cooperating with a member of the âmainstream mediaâ for such a story (â11 interviews, really?â one asked me) â theyâre cutting her slack.
Once upon a time, such survival was unheard of in Trumpâs orbit. In Trumpâs first term, some officials were shown the door for less â in part because it was knives-out for anyone and everyone over any little slip-up. Political junkies remember full well when ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI was fired 10 days into his tenure as communications director after he trash-talked another Trump official while thinking he was off the record. (Though, letâs be fair, he didnât have anywhere near the close ties to the president that Wiles has.)
That wasnât the case for âSusie Trump,â as the president fondly calls her â mainly because many attribute Trumpâs success in part to Susieâs tight-ship operation. With the exception of this little PR nightmare, Trump allies say sheâs overseen a smooth-sailing enterprise compared with Trumpâs first term. The level of drama and sniping between allies has decreased tremendously on her watch. And rather than trying to control the president, she views herself as a vessel for enacting the presidentâs agenda.
That, in a nutshell, is why insiders are all saying tonight that sheâs not going anywhere. Controversy be damned. They love her too much. (And, they say, so does the presidentâŠ)
As far as this bombshell story goes, I called up Whipple tonight, and he told me, âthe ground rules were crystal clear from the get-go,â pushing back on any suggestions that Wiles didnât know that whatever crossed her lips could appear in print.
âEverything was on the record unless explicitly agreed otherwise. And there was almost no âotherwise!ââ he said.
Whipple also balked at an assertion from Trump allies that the White House and Wiles werenât given a heads-up that the story was coming. âSusie knew it was coming. I told her,â he said.
đ đ„ WATCH the latest episode of my new digital morning show with SEAN SPICER and DAN TURRENTINE, âThe Huddle,â which launches in full on Jan. 5. Today we hit on âŠ
1:02 State of the Economy
7:11 Susie Gets Real Candid
22:01 White House Smoke Signal on Health Care?
28:13 The Senate & Ukraine /Russia
33:20 Change At The FBI?
40:11 Muskâs Return To Politics
44:39 Obamaâs âNot Nowâ Blowback
Great Substack Rachel. Like the style. You are doing great on the Huddle!