President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles is tightening the leash on Cabinet members’ globe-trotting as midterms pressure mounts.
Wiles, 68, who is seen by many as a stabilizing force after the chaos of Trump’s first administration, has imposed strict limits on overseas travel, telling Cabinet members and senior staff at a February meeting that trips abroad should only be taken when absolutely necessary, Politico reports, citing three people familiar with the private conversation.
Any Cabinet-level international travel must now clear Wiles’s desk, two of the insiders told Politico.
“All trips are run through Cabinet Affairs. The international ones are on a case-by-case basis, but they definitely want you to focus on domestic travel,” one of the people said.
The so-called Ice Maiden’s directive comes as Republicans face a gloomy midterm outlook, with Americans growing frustrated over the Trump administration’s foreign distractions and failure to lower prices and ease the cost of living.
Many Cabinet members logged extensive overseas travel in the first year of Trump’s second presidency, despite his re-election campaign’s “America First” slogan and focus on domestic issues.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins unveiled what she called an “aggressive international travel agenda” aimed at boosting U.S. farm exports, before setting off on a global swing that included Vietnam, Japan, India, Peru, Brazil, and the United Kingdom.
Her jet-setting has raised eyebrows among some close to the president, according to Politico.
“It’s like, why is Brooke going to the U.K.?” one of the people familiar with the internal conversations told the outlet. “Susie has definitely been more direct in laying down the law.”
When reached for comment, a USDA spokesperson told the Daily Beast in a statement, “Secretary Rollins has taken an historic and unprecedented role to boost American market access and is constantly meeting with American exporters and key foreign government counterparts in key markets to ease trade barriers while USDA Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Luke Lindberg has visited over two dozen countries in the last year. We are unapologetically working with foreign governments to boost American ag exports.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Two people familiar with Wiles’ order said it wasn’t aimed at any one official’s travel history, but rather part of a wider effort to return the White House’s focus to campaigning at home.
Wiles held the meeting shortly before Trump launched his war with Iran, which has thrown a wrench in his chief of staff’s hopes to refocus on domestic politics, and before he fired Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary.
Noem, who has faced scrutiny over her use of a taxpayer-funded luxury aircraft to jet around with her alleged lover Corey Lewandowski, traveled to the United Kingdom, Italy, Bahrain, Israel, Argentina, Poland, Ecuador, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica during her tenure.
Wiles summoned dozens of top GOP operatives from multiple states to attend an urgent closed-door summit in D.C. on Monday, Politico reported, amid what one source called a wider push to “intensify preparations” in “a challenging midterm cycle.”
The crisis talks came as a new AP-NORC poll found that about 7 in 10 Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. Only 30 percent of Americans approve of the way Trump has handled the economy—a steep drop from 38 percent just a month ago and his lowest rating in an AP-NORC poll since reclaiming the White House.
Trump’s overall job approval has slipped to 33 percent, a five-point drop from 38 percent last month.
