President Donald Trump defended his White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Tuesday after she delivered a blunt assessment of the president and his administration.
Wiles turned heads with a series of interviews she did with Vanity Fair ahead of its feature, released on Tuesday.
Trump dismissed the article, but he also admitted he did not read it. Instead, he blasted the media for the piece, which came after his top staffer gave Vanity Fair eleven interviews over the course of his first year back in office.
In one of her interviews, Wiles said Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality.”
But the president did not take offense or push back on his chief of staff’s remarks.
In an interview with the New York Post on Tuesday, the president responded that Wiles’ observation was right.
Trump said that he was not offended by her words and that he does have a “possessive and addictive type personality.”
In the Vanity Fair article, Wiles said he had an “alcoholic’s personality” and “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do.”
The president noted that there was a reason he did not drink alcohol.
“No, she meant that I’m—you see, I don’t drink alcohol,” Trump 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.”
Wiles described to Vanity Fair that “high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink” and noted that she is “a little bit of an expert in big personalities.”
Trump said on Tuesday that he was very fortunate that he was not a drinker.
“If I did, I could very well, because I’ve said that—what’s the word? Not possessive—possessive and addictive type personality. Oh, I’ve said it many times, many times before.”
Trump admitted to The Post that he did not read the articles with her unfiltered interviews and said he does not read Vanity Fair.
However, the president praised Wiles and said she has done a “fantastic job.”
Trump has repeatedly touted Wiles as his chief of staff, even referring to her as “Susie Trump” at an event.
The president slammed Vanity Fair and the article’s author, Chris Whipple, for the feature. The story included interviews, not just with Wiles but also with other top officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who all posed together for photographs for the article.
“I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided,” Trump said.
He dismissed Whipple, who has written about multiple White House chiefs of staff, as having done “a couple of very short interviews” and said “Susie generally doesn’t do interviews.”
Wiles did eleven interviews over the course of Trump’s first year back in office for the feature.
“If anybody knows the interviewer, and if they know Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair is a totally—it’s lost its way. It’s also lost its readers, as you know,” Trump said.
The post Trump Offers Bonkers Defense of Loose-Lipped Chief of Staff appeared first on The Daily Beast.
