A top aide to President Donald Trump said he has an “alcoholic’s personality” and also said Vice President JD Vance has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”

Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, made those comments and others in a series of interviews throughout 2025 with Vanity Fair. The magazine began publishing stories based on the interviews on Tuesday.

Her frank comments were surprising to many in Washington, according to multiple news reports.

Wiles made the comments on Trump’s personality in comparison to her father, sportscaster Pat Summerall, who she said suffered from alcoholism, according to NBC News.

“Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say. But high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink,” Wiles said. ”And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.” She added that Trump “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

In addition to calling Vance a conspiracy theorist, Wiles said his conversion from a critic of Trump to a supporter was “political,” according to CNN.

She commented on a number of other figures in Trump’s orbit, including Elon Musk. She called the billionaire an “odd, odd duck” and “an avowed ketamine user.”

She said Musk’s actions were not always “rational” and some of them left her “aghast,” according to The New York Times. Wiles called Russell Vought, the White House budget director, a “right-wing absolute zealot.”

She said Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” in her handling of the Epstein files, according to the Times.

Wiles said she tried to convince Trump not to pardon the most violent rioters from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She also urged him to delay announcing his major tariffs because his own advisers did not agree on an approach.

She was unsuccessful in both those efforts.

Trump and other top aides defended Wiles after her comments were published.

In an interview with the New York Post, Trump said Wiles was doing a “fantastic job.”

Vance brushed off the comments.

“I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true,” Vance said during an event in Pennsylvania, according to CNN.

Vought praised Wiles as “exceptional” and “an ally in helping me deliver for the president,” according to the Times.

In a post on X, Wiles criticized the Vanity Fair article as a “disingenuously framed hit piece.”