Who is Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff? A Look at Susie Wiles, First Female COS

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Next, she is the White House’s first female chief of staff. And now, Susie Wiles, who led his presidential campaign, is under the spotlight as she attempts to navigate and direct Trump’s White House. Given his first term saw off four chiefs of staff, our next guest believes Wiles may be, quote, “Trump’s best hope.” Journalist Chris Whipple spoke to all living White House chiefs of staff for his book, “The Gatekeepers:” And he now joins Michel Martin to discuss it.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Chris Whipple, thanks so much for talking with us.

CHRIS WHIPPLE, AUTHOR, “THE GATEKEEPERS”: Good to be with you.

MARTIN: You’ve done a lot of things in your career but one of the interesting things you’ve done, at least for somebody like me, who’s in Washington, is you’ve written a whole book about the inner workings of the White House, specifically focusing on White House chiefs of staff. So, for people who have not been so fortunate as to like, you know, sit in those briefing rooms and kind of watch these people do their thing, what is that person’s role?

WHIPPLE: Yes, the book I wrote was called “The Gatekeepers,” and it was a revelation to me because it turns out that the White House chief of staff is the second most powerful job in government. Every president learns often the hard way that you cannot govern effectively without empowering a White House chief of staff to do any number of things, but most importantly, to execute your agenda and tell you what you don’t want to hear. That’s a challenge with somebody like Donald Trump. But it’s a critical job and I really believe it when the — you know, the subtitle of my book is, “How the White House Chiefs of Staff define every presidency.” And to some extent, they really do.

MARTIN: Some chiefs of staff are — you know, even if you don’t really follow politics closely, there’s some names you might know of people like James A. Baker, for example, former secretary of the treasury and a secretary of state or Ken Duberstein or like Leon Panetta, as you mentioned, he’s somebody who kind of has his own public profile. I mean, this — and maybe Rahm Emanuel, but that’s the exception I learned from your book. That’s the exception.

WHIPPLE: Yes. They’re often unheralded. You know, there are various models and certainly Jim Baker and Leon Panetta and Rahm Emanuel, they were people everybody knew about. But there are others in the mold of, for example, Jeff Zients, who was Joe Biden’s last White House chief of staff who, really, is a — was a superb manager, but an under the radar introverted person. And so, that’s — I think that may very well be the model for Susie Wiles, who is also someone who is not extroverted by any means, who doesn’t need the attention or want it. She’s going to try to make this — execute Trump’s agenda, but without trying to steal the spotlight, which will be just fine with Donald Trump.

MARTIN: So, let’s talk about Susie Wiles. A departure, it seems, from President Trump’s first term. He had four chiefs of staff, and none of those relationships seem to have ended particularly well. You wrote an op- ed about her and what role she may or play in this next Trump administration. First of all, I was like fascinated to realize that she’s Pat Summerall’s daughter. You know, Pat Summerall being a famous, you know, NFL broadcaster, former player. And, you know, that was news to me. So, what else is going to be news to us about Susie Wiles?

WHIPPLE: Yes. No, she’s an absolutely fascinating character. And you pointed out one thing about her that’s really intriguing. One — among other things, she’s the first woman ever to serve in this job, is — in the second most job — most powerful job in government. And I think it’s going to be fascinating to watch. But she is someone who has this uncanny ability to impose at least some discipline on Trump’s disorder. Nobody’s ever been able to do that before. She would be the first to tell you that she doesn’t manage Trump. Trump is unmanageable. But she’s figured out some sort of modus vivendi. She chooses her fights carefully. And she has lasted a long time. He trusts her. She has charm and abundance. And she’ll need every bit of it to succeed. Temperament is an underrated quality among White House chiefs, but it’s very important. James Baker had it. Leon Panetta had it. Susie Wiles has it. Finally, and she’s, I think, will have an advantage as a woman. The women in Trump world learn not to compete with Trump or try to be equals. Susie Wiles has mastered that. And you mentioned her father, Pat Summerall. Both she and Trump grew up with very difficult fathers. Fred Trump was a cold fish. Pat Summerall was extremely difficult and he was an alcoholic. He credited her, Susie, with getting him into treatment. I think Susie would be the first to tell you that having dealt with her father, who was not — who — which was a real challenge really helped her to prepare for Donald Trump. She knows something about handling difficult men.

MARTIN: What is her attraction to politics? Like, how did she get into it? And how did she and Trump get connected?

WHIPPLE: You know, she was a 23-year-old scheduler for Ronald Reagan and later worked in the Labor Department. And prior to that, of course, she — right out of the University of Maryland, she worked for Jack Kemp, Congressman Jack Kemp, the pro football player. That was a job that Pat Summerall helped to arrange for her. She became addicted to it, to politics, and spent her whole career in Florida. She was — among other things, she really ran the winning campaign for Ron DeSantis for governor. And then, they had an ugly falling out, very bitter falling out. And it’s still a mystery. I’ve asked her about it. And to this day, she doesn’t understand precisely why Ron DeSantis turned on her, but he did viciously and really tried to destroy her career. Trump rescued her. And she — he was grateful to her for having carried Florida for him in two elections. And she ended up becoming the co-chair, but really, first among equals, as the head of his 2024 campaign.

MARTIN: What’s she good at?

WHIPPLE: She’s incredibly organized and she knows — she’s just a very smart and savvy political operative. She understands how to — she’s a great manager. And again, her superpower seems to be her ability to work with somebody like Donald Trump. She’s very good at managing him. And I put “manage” again in quotes.

MARTIN: What’s the evidence of that? Can you give us an example?

WHIPPLE: Well, she certainly had her share of moments of truth with Trump, and one of them came when Trump called her to a meeting with several witnesses and tried to intimidate her, complained that she wasn’t up to the job and turned to the others in the room and said, What do you think? Should I fire her? He was trying to humiliate her. She retreated but she didn’t run away. And she came back. She lived to fight another day. She came back to Trump shortly thereafter. And she said, don’t ever do that, I’m paraphrasing now, but don’t ever do that again. Trump said, I won’t have to.

MARTIN: In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, you wrote that Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s final White House chief of staff, once observed that campaigning is trying to destroy your opponents, while governing is making friends with them. In his first term as president, Donald Trump did not get the difference, and his tenure was often overwhelmed by dysfunction and chaos. Well, I haven’t seen —

WHIPPLE: Yes. Trump has never understood the difference.

MARTIN: Well, I haven’t seen so far that he’s really trying to make friends with anybody. I mean, I do see that he’s trying to exert his will. And so, I’m just wondering what is Susie Wells do about that or just is — or (INAUDIBLE) construct just no longer relevant?

WHIPPLE: That’s why it’s the most difficult job in Washington, bar none. It is thankless. It is relentless. It is 24/7. And then you can — it’s exponentially more difficult with somebody like Donald Trump. When I interviewed Reince Priebus, shortly after he stepped down as Trump’s chief of staff during his first term, the first thing he said to me was, Chris, take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by 50. Those were the fights he claimed he was fighting behind the scenes that nobody knew about. So, it’s a huge challenge for Susie Wiles, not least because Trump has never understood the difference between campaigning and governing. And Ken Duberstein is absolutely right. Campaigning, you try to destroy your opponents, and Trump has a genius for that, a feral genius. He’s never understood how to make friends or cut deals on Capitol Hill, and that’s why his first term was so unproductive. You know, it’s one thing to put judges on the bench, it’s another thing to repeal and replace Obamacare or pass infrastructure or other bilateral things. And so, far, all we’ve seen from Trump has been this firehose of executive orders and proclamations. Some egregious, some unlawful or unconstitutional, some dubious. And it’s not a good sign, I have to say. But it’s — for Susie Wiles or Trump, because it suggests, when it comes to Wiles, that she’s either in agreement with a lot of these crazy orders that Trump has put out there or she’s not in the loop. And if she’s in the loop, then she’s clearly not being heard or being very effective. So, so far, I think it’s troubling.

MARTIN: You said in your op-ed that the hallmark of a good chief of staff is telling the president what he does not want to hear. And I — you know, I don’t think it’s a secret that President Trump doesn’t like to be told things he doesn’t want to hear. He doesn’t like being told no. Can she do that?

WHIPPLE: I think that she is more successful at it than any of his — any of her predecessors were. And, you know, he — Donald Trump churned through four White House chiefs, each one more hapless than the one before. And he ultimately found the chief of staff of his dreams, Mark Meadows, who was the ultimate sycophant. I compared him, in one of my books, to a kind of glad-handing maitre d. He didn’t just want to please Trump, he wanted to please everybody. He could not tell Donald Trump hard truths. Susie Wiles has shown, over this long relationship with Trump and her ability to win that campaign, that she really does have some ability to tell Donald Trump hard truths. But this is a relative thing when it comes to Trump. You know, clearly, she decided not to fight the battle, for example, that probably any other White House chief would have thrown her body in front of a decision to pardon 1,500 January 6th insurrectionists. She evidently chose — she either didn’t fight that battle or she lost it. We don’t know for sure. But eventually, we’re going to find out.

MARTIN: Well, it’s been reported that Wiles has already taken a firm stance on Elon Musk’s access, you know, the tech mogul, Tesla, SpaceX, et cetera, who — it’s been reported, wanted to have an office in the West Wing. And apparently, she said no to that.

WHIPPLE: And she said, no way. And he’s in the executive office building. Yes, exactly. So, round one, goes to Susie Wiles. Now, Susie Wiles, one and Musk, zero. We’ll see if she can keep that up.

MARTIN: But here’s my question is, are they really interested in governing in the way that we think we have traditionally thought of as governing, getting certain policies approved and implemented and institutionalized? Because, yes, with this flurry of executive orders they’ve created a lot of — they’ve gotten a lot of attention. Some of these things, as we’ve said, are of dubious legality, a dubious constitutionality, and they’re going to be — that’s going to suck up a lot of attention. So, is the question here really to try to govern in the way we have been accustomed to thinking of governing or is it something else? And if it is something else, what is it?

WHIPPLE: Well, it could very well be two different answers. One for Trump and one for Wiles. Wiles, I think, without a doubt, wants to govern effectively. She wants to make the trains run in an orderly way. In the West Wing. She may be deluded in her belief that she can make that happen with Donald Trump, but I think that is her mission. I think that’s what she is helping on accomplishing. When I — the last time I spoke to her, she was driving from Mar-a-Lago, she said she just got off the phone with Hakeem Jeffries and she was telling him, you get ready. This is a new Trump. This is not the guy from his first four years. He really wants to get stuff done. He — you know, he’s — he knows how to do it and he’s going to buckle down and govern. I’m paraphrasing. She didn’t say it in those words. But she believes there’s a new Trump. Well, we’ll see about that.

MARTIN: You just mentioned Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. One of the things you pointed out in the op-ed in The New York Times that we’ve been talking about is that she doesn’t really have experience on Capitol Hill. She certainly doesn’t have the kind of experience that Jim Baker had or that Leon Panetta had. How critical is that going to be?

WHIPPLE: It’s a real strike against her. It’s something that she’s going to have to compensate for. She’s going to have to be an awfully quick study, because, you know, the ideal White House chief of staff is someone not only with a White House experience, but someone who knows Capitol Hill like the back of his or her hand. Jim Baker was certainly one. Leon Panetta was another. She doesn’t have that experience except way back when, when she was in the Reagan administration as a young woman. So, that’s going to be a real challenge for her.

MARTIN: I have to point out that the Republicans on the Hill have shown a great willingness to defer to the president. You know, the Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate have pledged their loyalty to the president, said that they’re there to, you know, help him get his agenda through, and they can’t afford to lose a lot of votes. And so, the question is, does she have the ability to — I mean, obviously, it’s their job to whip their own caucuses, right? It’s — you know, the leaders of those two bodies, it’s their job, at the end of the day, deliver the votes. But is that a situation where the chief of staff plays a role?

WHIPPLE: Absolutely. I mean, the White House chief of staff is really, among other things, all the things we’ve talked about so far. That’s the person who really has to be able to corral, wrangle votes on Capitol Hill. You can’t just leave that up to the caucus. Now, the Republicans may — the Congress may seem cowed, intimidated by Trump right now, and I think they are on the back foot. That’s an opportunity, obviously, for the Trump White House and another — one advantage that Susie Wiles has that will obviously work in her favor on Capitol Hill is that I don’t think anybody doubts that she speaks for Trump. That’s critical. And it was never the case with her predecessors from previous to Meadows. Nobody was ever sure that those guys when they open their mouths that the president was speaking. But Susie Wiles has that, and I think that will be an advantage for her.

MARTIN: Chris Whipple, thanks so much for talking with us.

WHIPPLE: My pleasure.