Donald Trump has upsized his praise for his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, crowning her the “most powerful person in the world.”
Trump was speaking at an AI summit at the White House on Wednesday when he made the comments about Wiles, before swiftly returning to one of his favorite lines about the 67-year-old.
Trump first boasted that Wiles “can take out a country with a mere phone call.”
He then added, “Now, they just voted her the most powerful woman anywhere in the world. She might be the most powerful person in the world, I think. Hasn’t she done a good job?”
Last December, Forbes ranked Wiles at No.72 in their list of The World’s Most Powerful Women. The Daily Beast has contacted the White House to clarify which vote President Trump was referring to.
Trump’s “powerful woman” line is almost identical to his description of Wiles he trotted out at the Summer Soiree at the White House on June 4.
Back then, Trump said, “I want to thank the great chief of staff, the most powerful woman anywhere in the world they say.”
He added, “I was going to say one phone call and a country is wiped out but we’re not going to say that because we’re a peace-loving nation.”
Trump’s praise stretches back to at least March, when he hailed Wiles as the “most powerful woman in the world” at a Women’s History Month celebration at the White House.
He repeated the assertion during a cabinet meeting at the White House in May.
“Susie, the most powerful woman in the world, they say,” Trump noted, adding, “I agree with that.”
Wiles, 67, is the first female chief of staff in U.S. history. She was upgraded from director of his 2016 campaign in Florida to senior adviser to his 2024 election bid.
Trump has pointed out that Wiles prefers to stay in the background. However, in a rare interview earlier this month, Wiles weighed in on the split between Trump and Elon Musk.
“The president was very, very kind to him, and Elon had so much to offer us,” she told Pod Force One’s Miranda Devine.
Wiles added, “He knew things we didn’t know. He knew people and technologies that we didn’t know. It was a great thing when it was a great thing, and had a very, I think, a very troublesome ending.”
In an interview in March with Lara Trump, Wiles said, “I see my job as just sort of keeping the trains on the tracks and running on time here, so that the subject matter experts, and particularly the president and the vice president, can do what they need to do to fix the country.”
She said at the time her goals for the Trump administration were to “settle a war,” and “peace in the world.”
“These are heady, big things that are important not for now, but for the future,” Wiles said. “Rebuilding the American economy. Getting all these criminals out of our country. Peace in the world.”
