Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed Vanity Fair deliberately doctored their White House expose to make Donald Trump’s team “look bad.”
The prestigious magazine published an explosive two-part exclusive on Tuesday, based on a year of interviews with Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and other Trump figureheads by reporter Chris Whipple.
Among the salacious nuggets contained within the story is a moment, when, posing for an individual portrait by photographer Christopher Anderson, Vice President JD Vance said, “I’ll give you $100 for every person you make look really s–tty compared to me. And $1,000 if it’s Marco.”
After revelations from the story blew up, Marco went into damage control mode.
“It is obvious to most people that Vanity Fair deliberately manipulated pictures and reported statements without context to try and make the WH team look bad,” Rubio wrote on X, without referencing Vance’s financial challenge.
Rubio also defended Wiles in his X post, who called Elon Musk “an avowed ketamine [user]”, said Attorney General Pam Bondi had “completely whiffed” on her handling of the Epstein files and claimed Trump was “wrong” about his claims that Former President Bill Clinton had visited Epstein’s island 28 times.
“There is nobody more loyal or committed to President Trump’s mission than Susie Wiles,” Rubio posted dutifully.
The Daily Beast has contacted Vanity Fair for comments on Rubio’s claims.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the article an example of “disingenuous reporting,” claiming Whipple had taken Wiles’ words “wildly out of context.”
Leavitt added, “The most egregious part of this article was the bias of omissions that was clearly present.”
Whipple told Joanna Coles in The Daily Beast Podcast that he stood by his reporting.
“It’s interesting that the White House has not disputed a single fact in the piece because we’re on absolutely solid ground,” he explained.
“Everything in that piece—everything Susie said—was on the record and on tape, by the way. So look, I understand that, you know, they’ve made a statement. It speaks for itself. But the Vanity Fair piece is absolutely solid, and all of her comments were on the record.”
Conservative host Scott Jennings appeared on CNN’s NewsNight on Tuesday but, similarly to Rubio, was more concerned with unflattering photos of Trump’s staff, including Leavitt and Wiles.
“To me, the biggest scandal of the day was the photo,” Jennings said. “What was going on with the photos? They took these photos, they zoomed in on them massively. They edited them to make them look bad. Why is Vanity Fair doing this with the photos if not to intentionally hurt people?”
Channelling Leavitt’s language, Jennings said he had no problem with the interviews, but said he thought the “photo thing” was “pretty egregious.”
Wiles claimed on X that the Vanity Fair article was a “disingenuously framed hit piece” on herself and Trump.
She claimed the journalist had disregarded “significant context” to create “an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative” about the Trump administration.
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