WASHINGTON: White House chief of staff Susie Wiles revealed internal tensions in the Trump administration over issues from immigration enforcement to government downsizing in comments published by Vanity Fair on Tuesday that paint an unflattering picture of the role played by some of President Donald Trump’s close aides. In a series of 11 interviews with author Chris Whipple conducted over Trump’s first year back in office, Wiles, the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, described the teetotaling president as having “an alcoholic’s personality” and an eye for vengeance against perceived enemies. She also said Vice President J D Vance has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and described his shift from Trump critic to supporter as “sort of political”, motivated by his Senate campaign rather than principle. In a post on X, Wiles called the Vanity Fair story “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest president, White House staff, and cabinet in history”, saying it omitted important context and selectively quoted her to create a negative narrative. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also responded on X, saying Wiles is a loyal and trusted adviser to Trump, and the administration fully supports her. Vance defended Wiles, telling reporters in Pennsylvania that he admires her consistency and authenticity both in and out of the president’s presence. “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 the president could ask for,” he said. According to Susie Wiles, the magazine omitted context and quoted her selectively to create a ‘negative narrative’ In the interviews, Susie Wiles took aim at the way billionaire Elon Musk dismantled the US Agency for International Development and how Attorney General Pam Bondi initially responded to the planned release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Wiles said she warned Trump against pardoning the most violent participants in the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and pressed him to delay his decision on sweeping trade tariffs, but was unable to change his mind in either case. She said the administration should have applied greater scrutiny to the deportation of immigrants in the country illegally to avoid errors. “He has an alcoholic’s personality,” Wiles said of Trump, explaining that her upbringing with an alcoholic father prepared her for managing “big personalities”. Trump does not drink, she noted, but operates with “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing”. In the interviews, Wiles said Bondi “completely whiffed” her early handling of the Epstein files, an issue that upset Trump’s right-wing base. Bondi had initially suggested she was going to release incriminating information about Epstein’s alleged network of acquaintances but then backed off. Bondi said on X that Wiles works tirelessly to advance Trump’s agenda with loyalty, adding that any effort to sow division within the administration would not succeed and that the team remains united. Susie Wiles said in the interviews that she had read the Epstein documents and acknowledged that Trump’s name is in them, but that “he’s not in the file doing anything awful”. Trump’s push to have New York Attorney General Letitia James prosecuted on allegations of mortgage fraud was perhaps motivated by feelings of vengeance against the Democratic official, Wiles said. The case against James, a Trump critic, “was maybe the one retribution”, Wiles said. She added that while Trump may not wake up thinking about retribution, “when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it”. Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2025