Trump Chief of Staff Trashes Him and His Whole Team in Wild Interview

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has a lot to say about Donald Trump’s inner circle, and not much of it is flattering, if any. 

Wiles spoke to author Chris Whipple at different times throughout the first year of Trump’s second term as president, and her comments were published Tuesday by Vanity Fair. She had some choice words to describe the president and the people he has chosen to surround himself with. 

For example, Wiles, who grew up with an alcoholic father, said that teetotaler Trump “has an alcoholic’s personality.” (This is a shocking statement given that Trump’s older brother died of alcoholism.)

Wiles added that Vice President JD Vance has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” making a “sort of political” conversion from being a Trump critic to a MAGA loyalist because of his Senate run in 2022. She described the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Project 2025 acolyte Russell Vought, as “a right-wing absolute zealot.” 

Wiles said tech oligarch Elon Musk’s actions left her “aghast” and were not always “rational” in her view. 

“He’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person,” Wiles said. When Musk claimed in an X post in March that Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions but their public-sector employees did, Wiles said, “I think that’s when he’s microdosing,” explaining that Musk is “an avowed ketamine” user. Wiles later denied commenting on Musk’s ketamine use to The New York Times, but Whipple played a recording for the newspaper, in which she is heard saying those words.

Regarding Attorney General Pam Bondi, Wiles said that she “completely whiffed” in handling the Epstein files, a big issue for Trump’s right-wing base.  

“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said. “First, she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.” 

Wiles speaking candidly is surprising, and it remains to be seen if the fallout will affect her tenure at the White House. She’s already denying the comments, calling the Vanity Fair article a “hit piece.” Trump’s popularity levels are lower than ever, but she has been largely unscathed by negative media attention until now. Is her job in danger? 

FBI Director Kash Patel enraged users on X after he appeared in a teaser for Katie Miller’s podcast, as the manhunt for the mass shooter at Brown University was still underway.

In a clip posted to X Monday evening, Patel sat laughing beside his country singer girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, as Miller, the wife of the White House’s ghoulish deputy chief of staff, peppered them with lighthearted questions about their relationship.

Although it wasn’t clear when this podcast was taped, X users quickly jumped into the comments to remind Patel that there was still a killer on the loose.

“This is pathetic and disgraceful. There is an ACTIVE manhunt going on and the head of the FBI is doing the podcast circuit with his girlfriend,” wrote AdameMedia, a political commentator who has amassed more than 465,000 followers on X.

“Personally, I’d rather see the director of the FBI catching criminals and putting them behind bars vs going on podcasts with his girlfriend,” wrote Michael Zimmermann, another political commentator from Texas.

“Hey no rush on solving the at large killer in my hometown,” wrote user Hayden, who writes about transit and has amassed more than 131,000 followers on X.

The post came on the heels of Patel once again prematurely announcing details about the FBI’s suspect in the shooting Saturday. Online, heat became so intense that Miller posted a follow-up post Tuesday: “This was taped prior to Sunday.” She gave no explanation of why she felt it was appropriate to share now.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles may have given up the game, admitting that the Trump administration’s strike on alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean Sea is an effort to bring about regime change in Venezuela, rather than a war on drug trafficking as the administration has said.

Wiles spilled this tidbit—and various others—during a series of surprisingly candid interviews with Vanity Fair, which were published on Tuesday.

“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” Wiles told Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple over lunch in November. “And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.”

What exactly does Maduro crying “uncle” entail? That verbiage offers itself more to a U.S.-backed coup rather than the new war on drugs that the administration claims (without proof) to be fighting.

“The president believes in harsh penalties for drug dealers, as he’s said many, many times.… These are not fishing boats, as some would like to allege,” Wiles continued. “We’re very sure we know who we’re blowing up.… One of the great untold stories of the U.S. government is the talents of the CIA. And there may be an interest in going inside territorial waters, which we have permission [to do] because they’re skirting the coastline to avoid getting [caught].”

It seems clear that Trump is using any excuse he can find to justify the continued violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty up to the point of possible invasion. If it really was just about drugs, Trump would never have pardoned former Honduran president and convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez, and he would have never seized a Venezuelan oil tanker. Wiles’s comments confirm what many already suspect: Trump couldn’t care less about the narco-trafficking. He just wants an in for their oil.

Somehow, Joe Biden is responsible for one of the most horrific shootings in Australian history.

At least, that’s the narrative that Senator Lindsey Graham is pushing. In an interview with Fox News Monday night, the South Carolina lawmaker claimed that former Presidents Barack “Obama and Biden have a lot to do with this.”

“I blame the terrorist, but Obama allowed ISIS to come about when he withdrew from Iraq,” Graham continued. “Donald Trump destroyed the caliphate, killed [Iranian military officer Qassem] Soleimani, and got out of the Iran nuclear deal, and the dumbass Biden—the biggest dumbass on the planet—withdrew from Afghanistan, obliterated our borders, and rejoined the Iran nuclear agreement, making the Ayatollah flush with cash.”

At least 15 people were killed Sunday in a horrific attack at Bondi Beach, one of Sydney’s most popular locations. Two men—a father-son duo—allegedly opened fire on a crowd of Jewish Australians on the first night of Hanukkah. The country’s leadership has declared the incident a terrorist attack.

The suspects have been identified by authorities as 50-year-old Sajid Akram and his son, 24-year-old Naveed Akram. Indian police reported that the elder Akram was originally from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. He moved to Australia in 1998, and his son was born in the country. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said that the attack was “inspired by Islamic State.”

“You’re wondering what we’re dealing with. Trump had them in a box,” Graham barked. “And dumbass Biden comes along and tears it all up. And now we’re fighting these bastards again.”

Mere hours after the attack, the American right gripped the incident to advocate for the mass deportation of Muslims, even as Australian leadership insisted that Islamophobia and hatred were not appropriate reactions—underscoring that it was a member of the local Muslim community who intervened and stopped the violence.

President Trump’s spiteful defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board may backfire, as the latter is now demanding Trump’s psychological records, prescription medication records, and tax returns in the discovery process. 

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2022 after the board refused to revoke 2018 Pulitzer awards from The New York Times and The Washington Post for “perpetuating the absurdly false and defamatory narrative contrived by the President’s political opponents: that he and his campaign somehow colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government to gain advantage in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and thereafter maintained some nefarious connection with Russian elements during the presidential transition and Trump administration (the ‘Russia Collusion Hoax’).”

“This case has always been about correcting the record, revealing the truth, and vindicating the president and his supporters against the lies told to the American people by the Democrats and their PR machine known as ‘legacy media,’” a Trump spokesperson told Fox News just last week.  

But the Board stood its ground, clarifying that “no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”

Nevertheless, the lawsuit has dragged on deep into 2025. And the board is still fighting back, demanding Trump’s tax returns from the last decade—which he has yet to release since winning his second term. 

“To the extent You seek damages for any physical ailment or mental or emotional injury arising from Counts I-IV of Your Complaint, all Documents (whether held by You or by third parties under Your control or who could produce them at your direction) concerning Your medical and/or psychological health from January 1, 2015, to present, including any prescription medications you have been prescribed or have taken,” the board wrote in their filing. “For the avoidance of doubt, this includes all Documents Concerning Your annual physical examination. To the extent you do not seek such damages in this action, please confirm so in writing.”

As with the tax returns, Trump has been deliberately coy and unspecific about his health. He always claims to be in good health, bragging about acing dementia tests while his ankles swell, his hand bruises, and he falls asleep in televised meetings. If anything does come to light in discovery, his attack on the Pulitzer Board could very well blow up in his face.