Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff: 'Trump has alcoholic personality'. Then the reversal
Wiles disputes the Vanity Fair article from recorded interviews and speaks of quotes taken out of context. The White House defends it, while author Chris Whipple claims the work is correct and Trump downplays the case
President Donald Trump? A "high-functioning alcoholic personality". J.D. Vance? A long-time 'schemer'. These are some of the phrases attributed to Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff, in the profile published by Vanity Fair and based on a series of interviews. Wiles claims, however, that those quotes were taken out of context and inserted into a narrative constructed by omitting relevant passages, while the White House has intervened in her defence. Chris Whipple, author of the article, rejected the accusation and reiterated that the interviews were recorded.
The story stems from a two-part piece published on Tuesday 16 December by Vanity Fair and built on a series of interviews with Wiles conducted over the past year. The political point, even before the individual phrases, is the rarity of the operation: Wiles is described in the chronicles as a figure usually careful not to expose himself, which is precisely why the publication of such direct assessments has sparked alarm and curiosity in Washington.
"Alcoholic personality"
The most controversial sentence is the one in which Wiles compares Trump to a 'high-functioning alcoholic' on a personality level, even though he is a notorious teetotaler. In the story, she connects this to her own family history: having had an alcoholic father, the famous commentator Pat Summerall, she would be 'expert' in handling 'big personalities'.
Trump's reaction: "Fantastic"
In the face of the uproar, the president did not publicly question the head of his staff. Interviewed by the New York Post, he said that Wiles "did a fantastic job" and downplayed the idea of an internal crisis, acknowledging that he had a"possessive, dependent-type" temperament, and claiming to have used a similar description of himself in the past.
The raw nerve
In the course of the interviews, Wiles admits that "there may be an element" of retaliation in judicial initiatives against adversaries or figures considered enemies, conceding that from the outside "it may look vindictive". Among the examples cited in the reconstructions is the affair related to former FBI director James Comey and, in another passage, the fraud charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, which Wiles is said to have pointed to as a case in which the logic of retaliation appears most obvious.
