Trump's Top Aide Acknowledges 'Score Settling' Behind Prosecutions [View all]

Source: NY Times

President Trump's chief of staff said she tried to get him to end his "score settling" against political enemies after 90 days in office, but acknowledged that the administration's still ongoing push for prosecutions has been fueled in part by the president's desire for retribution.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, told an interviewer that she forged a "loose agreement" with Mr. Trump to stop focusing after three months on punishing antagonists, an effort that evidently did not succeed. While she insisted that Mr. Trump is not constantly thinking about retribution, she said that "when there's an opportunity, he will go for it."

Ms. Wiles made the comments in a series of extraordinarily unguarded interviews over the first year of Mr. Trump's second term with the author Chris Whipple that are being published Tuesday and Wednesday by Vanity Fair. Not only did she confirm that Mr. Trump is using criminal prosecution to retaliate against adversaries, she also acknowledged that he was not telling the truth when he accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the private island of the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Over the course of 11 interviews, Ms. Wiles offered pungent assessments of the president and his team: Mr. Trump "has an alcoholic's personality." Vice President JD Vance has "been a conspiracy theorist for a decade" and his conversion from Trump critic to ally was based not on principle but was "sort of political" because he was running for Senate. Elon Musk is "an avowed ketamine" user and "an odd, odd duck," whose actions were not always "rational" and left her "aghast." Russell T. Vought, the budget director, is "a right-wing absolute zealot." And Attorney General Pam Bondi "completely whiffed" in handling the Epstein files.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/us/politics/trump-susie-wiles.html

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Gift link for NYT article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/us/politics/trump-susie-wiles.html?unlocked_article_code1.9E8.Mw-x.ukvzkoWFT2MP

And see reply 5 below.


Editing to add the links for the Vanity Fair articles - 2 of them - which apparently aren't paywalled:

Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the "Junkyard Dogs": The White House Chief of Staff On Trump's Second Term (Part 1 of 2)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-susie-wiles-interview-exclusive-part-1

Susie Wiles Talks Epstein Files, Pete Hegseth's War Tactics, Retribution, and More (Part 2 of 2)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-susie-wiles-interview-exclusive-part-2