President Donald Trump was heard explaining why he gave his bizarre national address as soon as the cameras stopped rolling.
In seemingly unguarded comments made in front of journalists after the address, the president admitted that it had not even been his choice—but that his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, had made him do it as she plays cleanup amid the fallout from her embarrassingly candid Vanity Fair article.
In Wednesday night’s 18-minute double-speed diatribe, the 79-year-old president fired off mistruth after mistruth about how well his administration is doing and attacked his predecessor, Joe Biden, without having anything new to say.
The White House address was carried live by the major networks, with CBS forced to interrupt the live finale of its reality TV show hit Survivor so viewers could catch the presidential speech.
Trump announced the rare national address on Truth Social on Tuesday evening, just hours after Vanity Fair published its profile of Wiles. His post prompted speculation of a major public announcement, perhaps even a declaration of war on Venezuela.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, CNN’s medical analyst who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s cardiologist for three decades, was one of many to voice alarm about the president’s “manic” address even as the cameras rolled.
“I’m seriously concerned about the health of the president,” Reiner posted on X. “No one should be happy to see the president like this. He looks unwell.”
Detailing what happened after the cameras stopped rolling in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room, the Independent’s White House correspondent, Andrew Feinberg, posted on X: “@realDonaldTrump turned to his staff and asked how he did. They all responded [with] some version of great. ‘Very good, it looked really good!’”
According to The Hill’s White House correspondent, Julia Manchester, the staff in question were Wiles and deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, communications director Steven Cheung, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and his executive assistant Natalie Harp—none of whom were ever likely to say anything else.
Tellingly, Feinberg added: “He then said @SusieWiles told him he had… to give an address to [the ] nation.”
Freelance political journalist Laura Rozen confirmed Feinberg’s version of events and revealed further details of what was said as Trump was “reviewing his speech with staff.”
“He… said (not exact) ‘Susie told me I have to give an address to [the] nation,’” she wrote on X. “They went back and forth on length, and he said ‘how did I do?’ Wiles said ‘I told you 20 minutes and you were 20 minutes on the dot.’ The president then thanked the press and walked out.”
While those Trump aides present may have said they thought the address went down well, Zeteo report that “several close Trump allies” had said that “it was shocking—or at least puzzling—that anyone in the White House would think that this speech was a wise idea.”
“As they put it: The speech didn’t refocus the national conversation. It wouldn’t move the needle. And it did not look like the strategic move of somebody operating from a position of strength,” the outlet added.
But the revelation that Wiles—upon whom Trump so heavily relies and has praised to the point of even calling her “Susie Trump”—engineered the entire primetime event as her Vanity Fair embarrassment lingers is telling.
In the magazine’s two-part epic on Trump’s first year back in office, built on 11 on-the-record interviews, the previously discreet Wiles showed remarkable and surprising candor.
She described Trump as having an “alcoholic’s personality,” drawing on her experience of her own father’s addiction, and said he openly judges people by their “genes.”
She told the reporter she had read the Epstein files and concluded there was “no evidence” Bill Clinton visited the island, directly contradicting one of Trump’s favorite attacks, while conceding the president himself appears in the records but “not doing anything awful.”
Wiles also branded Vice President JD Vance a “conspiracy theorist”—lumping him in with FBI Director Kash Patel and his outgoing No. 2, Dan Bongino—and portrayed Elon Musk as a ketamine-using “odd duck” who naps in a sleeping bag at work.
The fallout was immediate and brutal, leading to MAGA unrest over her “swampy” lobbying past, critical TV segments, and a frantic damage-control campaign by Wiles and the West Wing—which culminated in Trump’s inexplicable address to the nation.
In the primetime speech itself, which was reportedly shorter than usual due to the insistence of TV bosses that it didn’t eat too much into the finale of reality show Survivor, Trump rattled through a greatest-hits reel of economic boasts that crumbled under basic scrutiny.
He promised troops a $1,776 “warrior dividend” Christmas bonus, even though Congress, not the president, controls the purse strings.
He bragged that gas was under $2.50 “across much of the country,” and even $1.99 in many states, despite federal data showing an average of around $2.90 and no state at $1.99.
He claimed to have slashed drug prices by “as much as 600 percent,” a mathematical impossibility, and to have attracted $18 trillion in new investment, even though his own White House puts the number below $10 trillion.
He insisted more Americans are working than ever, while unemployment has hit a four-year high. And he declared the affordability crisis “fixed” even as food prices and inflation remain stuck around 3 percent.
All of it was delivered at breakneck speed, leaving the public—and Trump’s own aides—baffled.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
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