Apparently, Donald Trump’s chief of staff’s only crime is saying what everybody is already thinking.
That’s according to media guru Brian Stelter, who appeared on CNN’s Inside Politics on Tuesday to analyze a series of damning interviews Susie Wiles gave to Vanity Fair, which included bombshell revelations about the president and his inner circle.
“The scandal is just saying the truth out loud, admitting what everyone else knows is going on,” Stelter told CNN’s Dana Bash.
“What Republicans say in private, and she just happened to be saying it in front of a tape recorder.”
Wiles, 68, spoke to Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple over more than a year in a series of astonishingly unguarded interviews. Hours after her tell-all was published Tuesday, she issued a rare statement on social media attempting to walk it back.
“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.”
She went on: “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. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!”
Stelter, however, wasn’t too convinced by her defense.
“It does seem to me she was in a very candid situation….she knows the whole time Chris Whipple is an author who writes for Vanity Fair, so there’s no excuse,” he said.
He floated the possibility that Wiles had simply let her guard down during hours of conversation with Whipple.
“Maybe you forget the tape recorder was rolling—I’m wondering if that’s the best way to explain some of this material because it is so honest and all on the record.”
Earlier Tuesday, Stelter also weighed in on X, noting that he previously worked at Vanity Fair and emphasizing that the magazine’s fact-checking process is “INTENSE.”
“Susie Wiles knew this story was coming and knew the quotes were legit. She can object to ‘context’ but not quotes,” he wrote.
Still, that did little to quell the wave of Trump-appointed officials slamming the outlet as fake news while rallying behind Wiles. Among them were officials she criticized in the article, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Vice President JD Vance.
Wiles took aim at Bondi’s handling of the Epstein firestorm and said that Vance’s transformation from a Never Trumper into a MAGA loyalist had been driven by political ambition.
In the two-part series, Wiles also described Trump as having an “alcoholic’s personality,” a characterization she said was shaped by her experience with her late father, legendary football player and broadcaster Pat Summerall.
Candid, on-the-record interviews are rare among Trump’s top brass—particularly from Wiles, who has long preferred to stay in the shadows. A grandmother, she has now survived years in Trump’s inner circle, including his 2020 election loss, after which he purged aides who questioned his false claims of election fraud.
She was elevated from directing Trump’s 2016 Florida campaign to serving as a senior adviser on his 2024 bid.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
