MAGA commentator Scott Jennings says he’s more concerned with the “egregious” pictures used in a bombshell Vanity Fair interview than the damning comments made in it by President Trump’s chief of staff.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, 68, fired off a series of astonishingly candid claims about key White House figures in her sprawling two-part feature with the magazine. The interview, released Tuesday, saw her dump on Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump himself.
Wiles told Vanity Fair that Trump appears in the Jeffrey Epstein files and “has an alcoholic’s personality;” that Vance’s shift from anti-Trump to all-out MAGA is “sort of political;” and that management and budget director Russell Vought is “a right-wing absolute zealot.”
But Jennings, a longtime Trump supporter, said the “biggest scandal of the day was the photos,” dismissing Wiles’s barrage of grenades as part and parcel of running an administration.
“Well, look, I don‘t care if Susie Wiles or anyone else in the White House has an opinion,” he said on CNN’s NewsNight on Tuesday evening, sitting opposite the profile’s author, Chris Whipple. “Truthfully, I don‘t care if they talk to a reporter. I don‘t care if they do it on the record or for a profile.
“Everybody‘s allowed to have opinions. And when you put a group of people together, you know, in a White House, you‘re going to have differences of opinions about things,” he said, adding that he thinks that’s “perfectly fine.”
“The only person‘s opinion here who really matters is the president‘s. He loves Susie Wiles,” he said.
For now, Trump remains steadfast in his support of Wiles. “President Trump has no greater or more loyal adviser than Susie,” his press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “The entire administration is grateful to her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”
Jennings, 48, echoed that sentiment, praising Wiles for the job she’s done.
“She runs the White House and I think runs it quite effectively,” he said. “I mean, the speed at which they‘ve moved this time around has astonished all of the president‘s supporters.
“So, look, I mean, I view this as an act of transparency. And, you know, I get that some of these things have rattled the, you know, the chattering class in Washington. But for the president‘s supporters out in the country, I don‘t really think this is going to bother them all that much that people sat down and had some candid conversations.
“I mean, maybe they weren‘t quite expecting to hear it, but if the president of the United States says, ‘I love Susie and she‘s our person and she‘s our chief’—He said it yesterday, He‘s saying it today…”
During the interview, Wiles injected fresh controversy into some of the scandals that have plagued the Trump administration. She savaged Bondi for her handling of the Epstein files, especially her initial claim back in February that federal prosecutors had a client list from the late sex trafficker that was sitting on her desk. “There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk,” Wiles said.
Jennings was unfazed by this revelation, focused solely on the images that accompanied Wiles’ comments.
“To me, the biggest scandal of the day was the photos,” he said, referencing the ultra-zoomed-in images of Vanity Fair’s interview subjects, including Vance, who Wiles labeled “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”
Another was Leavitt, whose picture was published in such high definition it appeared to show injection marks along her lips, a revealing clue that she may be edging closer to adopting Mar-a-Lago face.
“I mean, why did they take the photo?” Jennings asked. Looking at Whipple, he added, “I know you don‘t take the photos, but 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? Why is Vanity Fair doing this with the photos? If not… to intentionally, you know, hurt people. So again, I don‘t have any problem with people doing interviews. I thought the photo thing was pretty egregious.”
Wiles, who Trump has called “Ice Maiden,” has since distanced herself from the interview, calling it a “hit piece” in a bid to realign with the administration publicly.
“The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history,” she wrote on X.
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.
“The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade.”
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