Donald Trump’s chief of staff has spilled on how she copes with working for a president who is up all night posting on social media.
Susie Wiles was honored on Thursday night at the Independent Women’s Gala, where she received the Barbara K. Olson Woman of Valor Award.
On stage at the event, the White House chief of staff was interviewed about her job, and how she manages working for somebody who never sleeps “in a White House that runs on Trump time.”
“I am not one of those people that doesn’t need sleep, I actually do very much,” Wiles, 68, said, before explaining how she and others in the president’s inner circle manage the workload across such bizarre hours.
“I go to sleep early, and Dan Scavino—who I’m sure many of you know is a night owl—we divide it. I get the early calls, and Dan gets the late calls. That’s the way we’ve navigated over a couple of years, making sure we all get enough sleep, even if the president doesn’t.”
Scavino responded to Wiles’ comments on X with a video of an owl.
Trump, 79, notoriously keeps irregular hours, frequently posting up a storm on Truth Social late at night and early in the morning. Based on a Daily Beast analysis of the president’s posts, there were only five days in April when he could have had a full night’s sleep.
In addition, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins has previously revealed that the president does not sleep at all when traveling. “Trump is just always up and talking, and he’ll like, have them go and wake staff up if they’re asleep because he wants to talk to them,” she told podcaster Jason Tartick in October.
“I had this source who said, ‘You never wanna be on Air Force One on a trip.‘”
The former Attorney General Pam Bondi has also spoken about the president’s schedule, joking in an interview with the right-wing podcaster Katie Miller last year that nobody can keep up with him.
“I don’t know how he does it. I mean, none of us know when he sleeps. He’s working all the time and it’s just constant for him,” she said in September. “There aren’t enough hours in the day for any of us.”
The result of the president’s sleepless nights is that he has been caught dozing during public appearances and official meetings with alarming frequency since returning to the White House.
These public naps reportedly cause the president’s aides significant anxiety, not least because he explodes at them after the fact.
“I mean, you can’t wake him up. Also, the cameras are running. Everybody is in a low-level panic now all of the time about Trump falling asleep because then he gets mad,” Trump biographer Michael Wolff said on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast. “He gets angry. He essentially blames the people around him for the fact that he fell asleep.”
At Thursday’s event, where attendees were serenaded by FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend Alexis Wilkins, Wiles was also asked if there were any misperceptions about the White House and how it functions that she might want to clear up.
Wiles responded, breaking down the toll that working in the Trump White House can have on staffers. “We work hard, many people make sacrifices, they have young families, they have marriages that they’re trying to keep intact, and there’s just not the ability to prioritize that,” she explained.
“So when people come to work at the White House, they’re giving up a lot, so when we hear what rarefied air we live in, that’s true, but it doesn’t come without a price, and we’re honored to pay it, but I wish people understood more what seven days and 13 days and 21 days of 18-hour workdays do to you. It takes a bit away.”
Wiles also spoke of how she had continued to work despite receiving a diagnosis of breast cancer, which Trump himself announced on social media.
“I got a cancer diagnosis nine weeks ago and I come to work every day. I do my job. I don’t complain, and I think that sets an example too for the people I work with,” she said.
