Is Trump’s Most Powerful Aide Next on His Chopping Block?

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles could be facing the boot.

Donald Trump has reportedly called his allies to explore potential successors for his once-irreproachable “ice maiden,” Politico reported in its Playbook newsletter Thursday. The reviews of Wiles’s performance, apparently, are not good.

“She’s burned a lot of people,” a Republican operative close to the White House told Politico.

One senior elected Republican official who fielded Trump’s call told the digital newsroom that the president had raised “the first honest questions about Susie.”

Possible replacements include deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller or—as a left-field option—Randy Levine, the president of the New York Yankees, insiders told Politico. Other options extend to U.S. Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, real estate developer-turned-federal housing director Bill Pulte, and ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Still, Trump shied away from committing to the turnover, ardently defending Wiles in a statement.

“TOTAL FAKE NEWS Politico doesn’t care about facts, integrity, or honest journalism—it’s why I kicked them out of the White House!” the president told Politico. “Susie Wiles is my loyal and longest serving Chief of Staff—there is a reason for that. She has been with me since the beginning, is my trusted advisor, and has my COMPLETE confidence.”

Trump has resisted calls to fire his scandal-laden staffers throughout his second term, marking a stark contrast to the revolving door of his first administration. But people have come and gone, nonetheless.

By September, more than half of Trump’s original “A team”—approximately 56 percent—had departed, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution. Four cabinet positions have also turned over since Inauguration Day 2025: former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and former DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

The donors behind President Trump’s $330 million White House Ballroom project have finally been revealed. Trump isn’t one of them, even though he pledged to cover a portion of the cost himself.

The Washington Post has reported that 57 companies donated $100,000 or more to the vanity project. Some of those companies are headed by individuals who have already donated to Trump in other ways—and have been rewarded for it in return, in the form of business contracts and dropped investigations.

NVIDIA Apple, the Adelson Foundation, and Dish Network co-founder Charlie Ergen each tied the largest ballroom donation: $25 million.

Google gave $22 million for the ballroom as part of a settlement in Trump’s January 6–related lawsuit against YouTube.

Other notable contributors include:

• Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation: $20.27 million (Isaac is the former CEO of Marvel)
• Lockheed Martin: $10 million
• Microsoft: $10 million
• Palantir: $10 million
• RHI LLC: $10 million
• Comcast: $7.5 million
• Amazon: $5 million
• BlackRock: $5 million
• Cisco Systems: $5 million
• Caterpillar: $5 million
• Coinbase: $5 million
• Meta: $5 million
• T-Mobile: $5 million
• Kelly Loeffler & Jeff Sprecher Fund: $5 million (Loeffler is the head of the Small Business Administration)
• ServiceNow: $5 million
• Altria Group: $5 million
• ExtremityCare: $5 million
• Baszucki Gift Fund: $5 million
• Paul Singer Fund: $5 million
• Jeff Yass DAF: $5 million
• Winklevoss twins: $5.1 million
• NextEra Energy: $4 million
• Booz Allen Hamilton: $2.5 million
• Continental Resources: $2.5 million
• HP: $2.5 million
• Micron: $2.5 million
• Parsons Corporation: $2.5 million
• RAI Services Company: $2.5 million
• Union Pacific Railroad: $2.5 million
• Cantor Fitzgerald Chairman Brandon Lutnick (son of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick): $2.5 million
• Vantive US Healthcare LLC: $2.5 million
• Salesforce: $2 million
• Florida Crystals: $1 million
• Kraken: $1 million
• Vast Space: $1 million

At least $77 million for the ballroom was sent by anonymous donors.

Again, this isn’t the extent of these corporations’ ties to Trump, as many have donated in other ways, as well. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, for example, pledged $1 billion to Trump’s Genesis Mission AI project earlier this month and attended a $1 million-per-plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Google, too, gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and CEO Sergey Brin himself donated half a million dollars to the Republican National Committee last year. And this is just what we know about.

This is all extremely shady. These hugely influential business leaders donated to Trump’s ballroom to curry political favor and were initially able to move in secret, sending the funds to a White House account controlled by the most corrupt president of the modern era.

Kimberly Guilfoyle is reportedly “spiraling” after her fall from grace and nearly retracted her resignation.

The ex–U.S. ambassador to Greece (and Donald Trump Jr.’s ex-fiancee) was publicly asked to resign during White House press secretary Katie Zacharia’s first-ever media briefing Tuesday, following reports that President Donald Trump was preparing to give her the boot.

“We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” Zacharia said to assembled media professionals in the White House briefing room. “She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”

In the hours after Zacharia’s announcement, Guilfoyle was allegedly a mess, and even suggested that she attempt to stay on.

“Kimberly was spiraling, calling people and suggesting, ‘Maybe I don’t resign,’” an official familiar with the situation told PunchUp Wednesday. “I don’t think she was serious, but she was in her feelings last night. She was processing what had happened—but not very well.”

Guilfoyle is apparently too corrupt even for the Trump administration. She was unceremoniously asked to leave after a series of reports accusing her of threatening a host country official and offering MAGA donor Eric Deters access to the Trump administration in return for the payment of a $100,000 credit card bill. She was also caught boasting about her chummy relationship with two Greek tycoons who were bankrolling her international trips.

In the end, Guilfoyle posted her resignation to X. “I also want to address the recent allegations against me. These allegations are false, and I intend to vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity. I have dedicated my professional life to fighting for justice, standing up for what is right, and defending the values that make America exceptional. I will not allow false accusations to define my decades of public service,” she wrote. “I am proud of what we accomplished together, and I will always be a loyal supporter of President Trump and his mission to Make America Great Again.”

However, according to reports from the Daily Mail tabloid, Guilfoyle has been building a “burn book” full of incriminating Trump family secrets that she might use as leverage to get herself back in the president’s good graces.

Donald Trump just breezed through another cognitive exam. The astonishing wow-factor needed to pass this one? Remembering five words.

The president claimed “genius” status at a Wednesday rally in Bullhead City, Arizona for accomplishing the apparently gargantuan task.

“Five words, oh they mock me for this, oh, nobody up there could do any of these things,” Trump said, pointing ahead of him.

“They give me five words. They say, ‘Sir, we’re going to give you five words. We would like you to repeat those words, preferably in order.’ What they don’t say is, at the end of the test a half hour later, they do it again, so you don’t know the—” the president gently trailed off before barking: “Five words: Hat. Hair. Logo. White. Black,” insisting he “got them right.”

“A half hour goes by, they ask you 25-30 other questions—‘sir, in the middle of the test we asked you about five words. Will you please repeat them again, ideally in order? You will get points if you get them all,’” Trump recalled, ruminating for a moment on how many “points” he acquired.

Trump said he repeated the words again, allegedly causing the testers to exclaim, “Holy shit.”

“Nobody can do that,” Trump insisted. “They say very few people can do that, but almost none can do them in order like that. But I can. You know why? Because I’m a freakin’ genius.”

At another point, Trump shared that he was asked to do some basic arithmetic as a part of the procedure. “I got it right. Nobody gets it right,” Trump insisted as his audience cheered him on.

Trump took his first publicly documented cognitive exam in 2018 to waylay concerns about his alarming mental state, but the simple tests have seemingly become a point of pride for the 80-year-old.

In the years since he first “aced” the exam, Trump has invariably tweaked the questions he said he received on the test, at times bragging that he had correctly recited five words and performed basic multiplication while at other times insisting that he had passed thanks to correctly identifying a whale. In years past, the test’s authors claim that none of the versions in circulation actually had a whale on them.

But it doesn’t take much to impress crowds at a Trump rally these days. At a midterm campaign stop in Tennessee on Saturday, the president boasted to his supporters that he “could say the stupidest things and you’d clap.” Spoiler alert: they did.

Tensions inside the Trump administration are heating up, and the president’s appointees are at each other’s throats.

Deputy Secretary of State Chirstopher Landau and State Department special envoy Paolo Zampolli have been trading insults and allegations for nearly a year, according to messages obtained by Politico. Zampolli, a former modeling agent who incidentally introduced Donald Trump to his wife Melania, has had some trouble “staying in his lane,” according to Landau.

“I am hereby ordering you—once again—to immediately stop all work on ANY issues not directly tied to cultural diplomacy, including every one of the issues you mentioned in your recent emails,” Landau wrote to Zampolli in November 2025. “You have no authority to engage in ANY issues of foreign policy outside of cultural diplomacy, including all the issues you have named.”

Landau continued the email chain the following day, copying an additional 15 administration colleagues on the message. Landau wrote that Zampolli had “no intention of staying in the cultural diplomacy lane that you were assigned and accepted, and that you fully intend to continue undertaking unauthorized and possibly unlawful ventures in commercial and economic matters.”

In response, Zampolli spoke to Politico: “Definitely, he has a problem with me,” the special envoy said of Landau in an exchange reminiscent of a reality TV confessional. “It’s out of control what he’s doing, and I serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States of America. The only person that can give me this job and can terminate me is the president of America.”

Since Zampolli introduced Trump to Melania at a party in the 1990s, he has remained on the coattails of the president’s political rise. Trump named Zampolli to the board of the embattled Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2020, and now, in Trump’s second administration, Zampolli is the U.S. special representative for global partnerships, a position whose primary objective is to “represent the United States at global cultural events and to form global cultural partnerships.”

A scroll through Zampolli’s Instagram will show that he has taken a liberal approach to his assignment, meeting with the energy minister of Romania, attending meetings for the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund, meeting the United Arab Emirates’ director of foreign direct investment, and engaging in discussions to send Argentine astronauts to space.

Zampolli has also accused Landau of leaking a story to The New York Times that he said “caused irreparable harm to the First Lady and to my family,” likely referring to reporting in March that he had asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and deport his ex-girlfriend in an effort to win a custody battle over their son.

“Your threats and accusations are getting more and more bizarre, defamatory, and inappropriate for broad dissemination on email,” Landau replied in a message. “I have no idea what you are talking about and categorically deny being the source of anything.”

One official familiar with the email exchanges called the back-and-forth “cartoonish and embarrassing.” It’s a fair review of the chaos in the backrooms, or in this case, the inboxes, of Trump’s State Department.