{"id":236377,"date":"2025-12-16T21:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T21:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/236377\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T21:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T21:29:08","slug":"trump-has-alcoholics-personality-says-chief-of-staff-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/236377\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump has \u2018alcoholic\u2019s personality\u2019, says chief of staff \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> has an \u201calcoholic\u2019s personality\u201d; JD Vance<\/a> has been a \u201cconspiracy theorist for a decade\u201d; Elon Musk<\/a> is an \u201codd, odd duck\u201d. And the internal divisions were \u201chuge\u201d over Washington\u2019s so-called liberation day tariffs that rattled markets in April and had to be rolled back.<\/p>\n

Susie Wiles<\/a>, the White House chief of staff, delivered those judgments on the president and his inner circle in an explosive interview with Vanity Fair magazine that was published on Tuesday and contained unusually biting critiques of key figures in the administration.<\/p>\n

Ms Wiles (68), a political consultant from Florida, served as Mr Trump\u2019s campaign manager last year and has been credited with bringing effectiveness, if not order, to the president\u2019s operation throughout the election and, at times, to the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a little bit of an expert in big personalities,\u201d Ms Wiles said in the interview. She claimed that as the daughter of an alcoholic father, she thought that Mr Trump had an \u201calcoholic\u2019s personality\u201d \u2013 recognising similar character traits even though the president does not drink.<\/p>\n

He \u201coperates [with] a view that there\u2019s nothing he can\u2019t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,\u201d Ms Wiles said. But while she offered a positive spin to her assessment of Mr Trump, her verdict on Mr Vance, the vice-president and political heir-apparent of the president\u2019s Maga movement was more damning.<\/p>\n

When discussing the pressure on Mr Trump to release all the files related to the deceased sex trafficker and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>, Wiles said the issue had been especially important to Mr Vance because he had been a \u201cconspiracy theorist for a decade\u201d. She also took a dig at Mr Vance\u2019s transformation from Trump critic to a prominent cheerleader, suggesting it was a calculated move.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis conversion came when he was running for the Senate,\u201d Ms Wiles said, referring to Mr Vance\u2019s winning 2022 campaign for a seat in the upper chamber of Congress representing Ohio. \u201cAnd I think his conversion was a little bit more, sort of political,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Ms Wiles also discussed Mr Musk\u2019s way of operating in the White House soon after Mr Trump began his second term, when the billionaire was tasked with slashing government programmes and agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge with Elon is keeping up with him,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the EOB [Executive Office Building] in the daytime,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd he\u2019s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it\u2019s not helpful, but he is his own person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Wiles confessed she was \u201cinitially aghast\u201d when Mr Musk moved to gut the US agency for international development. \u201cI think anybody that pays attention to government and has ever paid attention to USAID believed, as I did, that they do very good work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But she revealed that a bigger split within Mr Trump\u2019s team came over trade policy and the massive levies imposed on most US trading partners in April, with hardliners winning out over administration officials who urged a more guarded approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a huge disagreement over whether [tariffs were] a good idea,\u201d Ms Wiles said. \u201cIt\u2019s been more painful than I expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later on Tuesday, Ms Wiles appeared to row back on her comments, calling the Vanity Fair interview \u201ca disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest president, White House staff, and cabinet in history\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the president and our team,\u201d she wrote on X.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump \u200dtold the New York \u200dPost on Tuesday he supported Ms Wiles \u200cafter \u200bthe \u200dpublication of the interview. \u201cI \u200ddidn\u2019t read it, but I don\u2019t read Vanity Fair \u2013 but \u200cshe\u2019s done a \u200cfantastic job.\u201d \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has an \u201calcoholic\u2019s personality\u201d; JD Vance has been a \u201cconspiracy theorist for a decade\u201d; Elon Musk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,356,18,1647,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,125308,7,8,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-236377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-elon-musk","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-susie-wiles","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories","26":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115731376741515312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}