Our bespoke piñata of the day is Susie Wiles’ piece in Vanity Fair (they must be happy to be leaving Olivia…) We see the classic “fake news” incantations from none other than Wiles herself. Trump’s cabinet secretaries all lined up to post tweets repeating this claim, intoning the Trump-Wiles catechism as if they had just come out of a speed wrestling session with a pack of wild MAGA toughs. I started looking through the sample songs, as perhaps you have done or are too. What struck me here was perhaps not so much the quotes as the location.
Few American publications are more at the heart of America’s cosmopolitan world than Vanity Fair. It’s not liberal. The cosmopolitan small-c is different but overlapping. But perhaps even more than “liberal” is what MAGA is talking about when he denounces the “coastal elite.” They certainly talk more about that than, say, People for the American Way, Americans for Democratic Action, or Heather Cox Richardson. Susie Wiles is not stupid. And even if she can – as in a very low state de minimis chance – had an injudicious touch in a few quotes, she certainly knew with perfect clarity what Vanity Fair is.
To illustrate the first channel, it is difficult to overstate Wiles’ importance to Trump. Do you remember Susie Wiles’ latest drama or Death Watch? No, because that simply never happened. No one ever stays with Trump for long, but she goes way back in her time in exile as an indispensable person. (She has worked for Trump in less central positions since 2015.) I suspect she played a significant role in the relative stability of his re-election campaign and everything that counts as that stability compared to the crazier things that might have been without her. I’m not saying anything new. It’s been a common thread in almost every reporting on Trump since his darkest (for him) days after 2021. In a way, she became the person who could keep the trains of chaos rolling in time. I think it’s mostly that, or mostly that. But I also don’t think we can separate it from this energization process that we all see before our eyes.
But let’s also note the other important element of these quotes published by the Vanity Fair public relations machine.
If I’m not mistaken, Wiles appears to have been trying to warn Trump against his wildest and most malicious actions. She tried. And she wants us to know that she tried. In fact, the second point is probably more certain and more significant than the first. But he decided to do them anyway. And that’s very good. Because he’s the boss. But no one other than Wiles appears to have these rights written into his agreement. She can tell us everything about it, tell us what we all know, but within the MAGA politburo and officially. It’s not Beria. She’s not a Malenkov. She is untouchable. Or at least that’s what it looks like right now. All this seems, if not like a declaration of independence, but rather a declaration of untouchability on his part. Trump is my female dog. I can touch the third MAGA rail without taking damage.
To clearly understand what I mean, there is the channel of one’s personal security, which, there is every reason to believe, is very, very strong. And there is Trump’s personal enervation, the slow loss of coherence and synaptic fragmentation that we see both in his personal conduct and in the loosening of the reins of power around him.
To illustrate the first channel, it is difficult to overstate Wiles’ importance to Trump. Do you remember Susie Wiles’ latest drama or Death Watch? No, because that simply never happened. No one ever stays with Trump for long, but she goes way back in her time in exile as an indispensable person. (She has worked for Trump in less central positions since 2015.) I suspect she played a significant role in the relative stability of his re-election campaign and everything that counts as that stability compared to the crazier things that might have been without her. I’m not saying anything new. It’s been a common thread in almost every reporting on Trump since his darkest (for him) days after 2021. In a way, she became the person who could keep the trains of chaos rolling in time. I think it’s mostly that, or mostly that. But I also don’t think we can separate it from this energization process that we all see before our eyes.
But let’s also note the other important element of these quotes published by the Vanity Fair public relations machine.
If I’m not mistaken, Wiles appears to have been trying to warn Trump against his wildest and most malicious actions. She tried. And she wants us to know that she tried. In fact, the second point is probably more certain and more significant than the first. But he decided to do them anyway. And that’s very good. Because he’s the boss. But no one other than Wiles appears to have these rights written into his agreement. She can tell us everything about it, tell us what we all know, but within the MAGA politburo and officially. It’s not Beria. She’s not a Malenkov. She is untouchable. Or at least that’s what it looks like right now. All this seems, if not like a declaration of independence, but rather a declaration of untouchability on his part. Trump is my female dog. I can touch the third MAGA rail without taking damage.
And it makes me wonder some things. The rallying around the flag was rapid and complete. Just fucking absolute. Perhaps we will see hemorrhages in the coming days. But I doubt it. And to me, that means Wiles has complete confidence in his position, either because his hold on Trump is so secure (which I think) or it is so in part because of his increasingly obvious annoyance (which I think is at least part of the equation.)
To clearly understand what I mean, there is the channel of one’s personal security, which, there is every reason to believe, is very, very strong. And there is Trump’s personal enervation, the slow loss of coherence and synaptic fragmentation that we see both in his personal conduct and in the loosening of the reins of power around him.
To illustrate the first channel, it is difficult to overstate Wiles’ importance to Trump. Do you remember Susie Wiles’ latest drama or Death Watch? No, because that simply never happened. No one ever stays with Trump for long, but she goes way back in her time in exile as an indispensable person. (She has worked for Trump in less central positions since 2015.) I suspect she played a significant role in the relative stability of his re-election campaign and everything that counts as that stability compared to the crazier things that might have been without her. I’m not saying anything new. It’s been a common thread in almost every reporting on Trump since his darkest (for him) days after 2021. In a way, she became the person who could keep the trains of chaos rolling in time. I think it’s mostly that, or mostly that. But I also don’t think we can separate it from this energization process that we all see before our eyes.
But let’s also note the other important element of these quotes published by the Vanity Fair public relations machine.
If I’m not mistaken, Wiles appears to have been trying to warn Trump against his wildest and most malicious actions. She tried. And she wants us to know that she tried. In fact, the second point is probably more certain and more significant than the first. But he decided to do them anyway. And that’s very good. Because he’s the boss. But no one other than Wiles appears to have these rights written into his agreement. She can tell us everything about it, tell us what we all know, but within the MAGA politburo and officially. It’s not Beria. She’s not a Malenkov. She is untouchable. Or at least that’s what it looks like right now. All this seems, if not like a declaration of independence, but rather a declaration of untouchability on his part. Trump is my female dog. I can touch the third MAGA rail without taking damage.
