Journalism of Courage
US Vice President JD Vance has responded to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who described him as a conspiracy theorist. Vance, on Tuesday, acknowledged that he “sometimes” is a conspiracy theorist, but added that “I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true.”
Vance made the comments after Wiles, in an interview with Vanity Fair, said the US Vice President has been “a calculating conspiracy theorist for a decade,” and that his conversion from a “Never Trumper” Republican who was critical of the president to a supporter was “sort of political.”
Wiles, a former campaign manager of Trump, was the first appointee named to his second administration. She is also the first female to be appointed White House Chief of Staff.
In her Vanity Fair interview, published on Tuesday, Wiles gave an unprecedented sneak peek into the Trump administration.
In the two-part interview, Wiles also described teetotaling Trump as having “an alcoholic’s personality.
Wiles claimed that Elon Musk was an “avowed” ketamine user.
“The challenge with Elon is keeping up with him. He’s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the EOB [Executive Office Building] in the daytime. And he’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person,” she said.
Wiles referred to US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. as “quirky Bobby.”
She also criticised Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.
On Epstein, Wiles told the magazine that she underestimated the scandal involving the disgraced financier, but she sharply criticized how Bondi managed the case and the public’s expectations.
She also said at one point that Trump’s tariffs had been more painful than expected. She conceded some mistakes in Trump’s mass deportation program and suggested that the president’s retribution campaign against his perceived political enemies has gone beyond what she initially wanted.
Unsurprisingly, the interview sent shock waves through Washington while sending the West Wing into damage control. Wiles also pushed back on what she described as a “hit piece” that lacked context. But neither she nor other West Wing officials who came to her defense disputed any details in the profiles she described.
After the comments were published, Wiles disparaged it as 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 story,” she wrote in a social media post.
“I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.” Wiles did not deny the comments that were attributed to her.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt also rose to Wiles’ defense, writing on the X platform that, “President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie. The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”
