White House chief of staff Susie Wiles described Donald Trump as someone with an “alcoholic personality.”
Wiles, the usually media-shy senior aide whom the president calls the “Ice Girl,” made the remark in a lengthy profile in Vanity Fair.
Trump’s top ally said she recognized aspects of the president’s turbulent personality from his alcoholic father, legendary NFL star and broadcaster Pat Summerall, who died in 2013 after being sober for 21 years.
“A clinical psychologist who knows a million times more than I do will challenge what I’m about to say,” Wiles said. “But high-functioning alcoholics, or alcoholics in general, have exaggerated personalities when they drink. And so I’m a bit of an expert on high-functioning personalities.”
She added that Trump has “the personality of an alcoholic” and “operates with the idea that there is nothing he can’t do – nothing, zero, nothing.”
Trump does not drink, citing his older brother Fred’s struggles with alcoholism and his early death. Instead, the president has his own vice Diet Coke, and he even installed a button on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office that he presses to have the drink delivered to him.
Wiles, the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, has been a staunch Trump loyalist for years and served as his 2024 campaign manager.
She is known to be an extremely influential figure in Trump’s inner circle, although she plays a rather secondary role to some of the figures in the Trump White House who need the most attention.
“So many decisions of great consequence are made at the whim of the president. And as far as I know, the only force that can direct or channel that whim is Susie,” a former Republican told Vanity Fair. “In most White Houses, the chief of staff is the first among a group of equals. She is perhaps the first without equal.”
Wiles described his first meeting with Trump in 2015 on the set of The apprentice, Or She said the host was impressed that she was Summerall’s daughter.
“He’s said it a million times,” Wiles told the magazine. “I judge people by their genes. »
Wiles said in March that she had difficult conversations with Trump every day. “They deal with small things, not big things,” she said. “I hear stories from my predecessors about these defining moments where you have to step in and tell the president that what he wants to do is unconstitutional or will cost lives. I don’t have that.”
Wiles added that she can “pick her battles” on how confrontational she wants to be around Trump’s policies, because the president apparently has a clear idea of how he wants to run the country.
“So no, I’m not an enabler. I’m not a slut either. I try to think carefully about what I’m getting into. I guess time will tell if I was effective.”
The Vanity Fair interviews are an extraordinary moment for Wiles and Trump, with his truth bomb after truth bomb about the president and his inner circle. This included suggesting that Vice President JD Vance was “a decade-long conspiracy theorist” and calling his former “first buddy” Elon Musk a “confessed ketamine.” [user].”
She also openly calls the attempt to prosecute one of Trump’s enemies “retaliation.” Such an open and unvarnished statement of truth from a sitting White House chief of staff is unprecedented. What that means for Wiles was unclear.
