Name: Trump backs Susie Wiles after Vanity Fair article
Uploaded: 2025-12-17T00:17:22.130Z
Duration: 2 min 55 s
Description: President Trump defended White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles Tuesday in the wake of a shockingly candid interview Wiles did with Vanity Fair. CBS News White House reporter Olivia Rinaldi has more.

President Trump defended White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles Tuesday in the wake of a shockingly candid interview Wiles did with Vanity Fair. CBS News White House reporter Olivia Rinaldi has more.

Washington

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles gave a series of interviews to Vanity Fair, offering candid insights into the Trump administration's internal dynamics. Her remarks included characterizations of President Trump and other officials, as well as comments on high-profile topics such as the Epstein files and administration policies.

Despite the attention generated by her statements, Wiles has received strong support from President Trump and other senior officials, who defended her publicly and criticized the article's context. Wiles herself stated that the Vanity Fair piece misrepresented her comments but did not dispute the accuracy of the quotes.

Trump backs Susie Wiles after Vanity Fair article

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has given a candid interview about senior-level discussions within the Trump administration. Over the course of the first 11 months of President Trump's second term, Susie Wiles sat down for nearly a dozen interviews with Vanity Fair about the White House's inner workings. At one point, Wiles described the president as having an alcoholic's personality who operates like there's nothing he can't do. Joining us now is CBS News White House reporter Olivia Rinaldi. Olivia, what more did Wiles say in these interviews? Well, Lindsey, it was really stunning for a normally quiet White House Chief of Staff to give such candid remarks about not only the president and the vice president, but other people within the administration. When speaking about Russ Vought, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles allegedly said that he is a right-wing zealot. She also said that Elon Musk was allegedly an avid ketamine user during his time in government. On Attorney General Pam Bondi, she said that she completely whiffed on appreciating that there was a group of people who cared very much about the Epstein files. If you'll remember earlier this year when Pam Bondi gave a bunch of right-wing influencers binders about the Epstein files phase one. She said she completely whiffed on that. But then later, Susie Wiles said in this interview that President Trump is in the Epstein files. She said he's not doing anything awful in them, but he is on some of the flight manifests for Epstein's plane and said that not to be passe, but they were just young single boys together speaking about Trump and Epstein's relationship. So certainly quite notable. That's just a handful of the things that I've told you were in this two-piece Vanity Fair interview. There's plenty others that are getting a lot of attention here in Washington, not only on deportations, but the campaign in Venezuela and the president's tariff agenda, which she recognized had a bit of a rocky rollout and not only outside in the economy and stock market, but here in the White House as well. I mean, Wiles was pretty instrumental in getting President Trump elected, right? She is one of his closest advisors, loyal confidant. What is the response from within the White House? And are we hearing anything from her? Well, yeah, she was his co-campaign manager, and she is very trusted by the MAGA movement, by President Trump himself, first female campaign manager to chief of staff, very successful in that, right? And this White House is sticking by her. Caroline Lovett defended Suzy Wiles, as did J.D. Vance, the vice president, as did Secretary Pete Hegseth of the Defense Department. So all of them coming to her defense, even President Trump himself, in a New York Post interview tonight, all defending her. In a tweet, she did say that the piece, she called it a disingenuously framed hit piece on the finest president, the White House staff and cabinet in history. She says that significant context was disregarded, much of what I said and others about the team and the president was left out of the story. However, she's not denying the quotes, just the context. Olivia Rinaldi, thank you.

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