Trusted Trump aide Susie Wiles reveals he ‘has an alcoholic’s personality’, White House tensions

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has revealed internal tensions in the Trump administration over issues from immigration enforcement to government downsizing.

An article published in Vanity Fair based on a series of 11 interviews with Ms Wiles conducted over Trump’s first year back in office, paints ‍an unflattering picture of President Donald Trump’s closest aides.

Ms Wiles described the teetotalling president as having “an alcoholic’s personality” and an eye for vengeance against perceived enemies.

“He has an alcoholic’s personality,” Ms Wiles said of Mr Trump, explaining that her upbringing with an alcoholic father prepared her for managing “big personalities”.

Mr Trump does not drink, she noted, but operates ⁠with “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing”.

She also said Vice President JD Vance has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade” .

She 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.

The story - which offered a rare window into Trump’s White House - prompted swift pushback from Wiles, Trump and senior members of the administration, who praised her loyalty and leadership.

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.

Trump, who regularly describes Wiles as the “most powerful woman in the world,” told the New York Post he has full confidence in her.

He said Wiles was right to describe him as having an “alcoholic’s personality,” explaining ‍that he has a “possessive and addictive” personality.

Vance also defended Wiles.

“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, noting he and Wiles had often joked about him being a conspiracy theorist.

“But I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true,” he said.

Wiles said she warned Trump against pardoning the most violent participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and pressed him to delay his decision on sweeping trade tariffs.

She said Trump’s announcement of tariffs on US trade partners exposed deep divisions within his team, adding that the tariff ‌decision “has been more painful than I expected”.

Wiles said she does not view her role as constraining the president, but as facilitating his decisions.

“There have been a couple of times where I’ve been outvoted,” she said.

“And if there’s a tie, he wins.”

Wiles also said Bondi “completely whiffed” her early handling of the Epstein files, ‍a collection of Justice Department documents detailing the investigation into the late convicted sex offender.

The Epstein scandal has been a political headache for Trump for months, partly because he amplified conspiracy theories about the disgraced financier to his own supporters.

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, Wiles said.

The case against James, a Trump critic, “was maybe the one retribution”, Wiles said.

While Trump may not wake up thinking about retribution, “when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it”, she said.

Wiles was shocked by Musk’s dismantling of USAID, including its global aid programs, calling the approach “not the way I would do it”.

She said she confronted Musk over locking staff out of their offices, saying no reasonable person could view his handling of the aid agency as effective.