Karoline Leavitt is standing behind her boss.
The MAGA mouthpiece appeared on Fox News Tuesday afternoon to do damage control after Vanity Fair published a bombshell tell-all featuring White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Wiles, 68, spoke to Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple over more than a year in a series of astonishingly candid interviews—comments she attempted to walk back just hours after the article was published.
In a post on X, Wiles framed the piece as a “disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”
Leavitt, 28, echoed that sentiment during a Fox News appearance, where John Roberts, 69, questioned her. The Fox anchor noted that “clearly there was a lot of cooperation between the White House and Vanity Fair.”
“There are numerous interviews that Susie Wiles had with the writer over the course of pretty much a year,” he said. “What happened? What went wrong?”
In response, Leavitt lavished her superior with praise.
“Well, look, I would just echo my boss, Susie Wiles, who is the best chief of staff in our nation’s history, working for the greatest president in our nation’s history,” Leavitt began.
“This was, unfortunately, another attempt at fake news by a reporter who was acting disingenuously, and really did take the chief’s words out of context.”
Leavitt continued: “The reporter omitted all of the positive things that Susie and our team said about the president and the inner workings of the White House. And as Susie said today, it’s deeply unfortunate that happened, but it won’t distract us from making America great again.”
The article was reported by Whipple, who has authored a book on White House chiefs of staff, The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency. A 2017 biography notes that Whipple has interviewed 17 living chiefs of staff—none of whom have publicly refuted his reporting.
Leavitt wasn’t the only one who rushed to Wiles’ defense. Trump also blasted the piece Tuesday afternoon—despite admitting he had not read it.
In one interview, Wiles told Whipple that Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality,” a statement the president appeared to agree with during an interview with the New York Post.
“No, she meant that I’m—you see, I don’t drink alcohol,” Trump, 79, said. “So everybody knows that—but I’ve often said that if I did, I’d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic. I have said that many times about myself, I do. It’s a very possessive personality.”
Trump went on to praise Wiles, saying she has done a “fantastic job.”
Many of Trump’s political appointees also publicly rallied behind Wiles on Tuesday—including officials she criticized in the article.
Wiles took aim at Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein firestorm and said Vice President JD Vance’s transformation from a Never Trumper into a MAGA loyalist had been driven by political ambition.
“My dear friend [Susie Wiles] fights every day to advance President Trump’s agenda – and she does so with grace, loyalty, and historic effectiveness,” Bondi, 60, wrote on X.
For his part, Vance said, “The President and the entire team love Susie because she is loyal and good at her job. An extremely rare combo in the halls of power.”
The White House referred the Daily Beast to Leavitt’s Fox News remarks in response to a request for comment.
The post Karoline Leavitt Cornered By Fox News Over Susie Wiles Tell-All appeared first on The Daily Beast.
