New Delhi: US President Donald Trump believes there is “nothing he cannot do” and has a personality akin to an “alcoholic”, according to his chief of staff Susie Wiles.
In unusually candid remarks during an interview to Vanity Fair, Wiles also said the US president sought payback against political rivals in his second term and would go for it, whenever he sees an “opportunity”. She then added that she had reached a “loose agreement” with him to end such score-settling within the first 90 days of his presidency.
“Trump has an alcoholic’s personality. He operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” Wiles said. The US president, however, took no offence and came in support of Wiles saying that though he is a teetotaler, he’d “have a very good chance of being an alcoholic”.
“You see, I don’t drink alcohol. So everybody knows that — but I’ve often said that if I did, I’d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic. I have said that many times about myself, I do. It’s a very possessive personality,” Trump told the New York Post, adding that Wiles had “done a fantastic job.”
He had earlier called Wiles, the first female chief of staff, the ‘Ice Maiden’ who had a significant role in pushing his second term. Vanity Fair called her the ‘most powerful person in Trump’s White House–a first with no equals’.
Trump’s inner circle
Apart from Trump, Wiles called Vice-President J.D.Vance “a conspiracy theorist for decades” whose pro-Trump stance is more political than principled, and labelled former Trump favourite Elon Musk as “an odd, odd duck who is an avowed ketamine user”.
Vance’s shift, according to her, from a Trump critic to an ally was “sort of political” as he pursued a Senate seat. As for Musk, she said his actions were sometimes irrational and left her “aghast,” particularly his dismantling of the USAID.
The 68-year-old dubbed Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, as “a right-wing absolute zealot”.
In her conversation with journalist Chris Whipple, Wiles revealed that there was also a quiet rivalry brewing between Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who were both aiming to succeed Trump in 2028 and that there was “a huge disagreement over whether tariffs were a good idea” in White House.
Later, she dismissed the article, published Tuesday, as a “disingenuously framed hit piece,” accusing the magazine of omitting context to portray the administration as chaotic. “Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” she wrote on ‘X’.
The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.
Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the…
— Susie Wiles (@SusieWiles) December 16, 2025
Others rallied to her defense. In Pennsylvania, Vance said that he and Wiles had “joked in private and in public” about him believing conspiracy theories but he had never seen her be disloyal to the American president.
Similarly, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised her leadership, while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the magazine of “bias by omission.”
‘Score settling’
In the interview, she called Trump’s 2.0 era “a score settling” against political adversaries. “We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” she said.
That effort, she conceded, failed. “I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”
The White House Chief of Staff revealed that she asked Trump not to pardon the 6 January rioters, but he went on to do so.
She also admitted that Trump was wrong when he accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the private island of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “There is no evidence. The president was wrong about that.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” in handling the Epstein files, she added.
Wiles also acknowledged that the administration’s pursuit of criminal cases against figures such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) head James Comey could appear vindictive. Both cases were later dismissed by federal judges.
“In some cases, it may look like retribution,” she said. “And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”
On foreign policy, Wiles suggested Trump is pursuing a regime change in Venezuela, though she acknowledged that any “land strikes” would require Congressional authorisation. “He wants to keep on blowing boats up until (President Nicolás) Maduro cries uncle.”
She also expressed concern about aspects of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, conceding that deportation processes need closer scrutiny. “If there is a question, I think our process has to lean toward a double-check.”
The interviews also highlighted internal divisions over tariffs, which Trump announced despite opposition from his advisers. “It’s been more painful than I expected,” Wiles conceded.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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