The Real Revelation in the Susie Wiles Interviews
In a normal presidency, the interviews that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles gave to Vanity Fair would trigger her resignation, maybe even the president’s impeachment. She admitted that President Donald Trump employs prosecutorial power for “score settling,” called Budget Director Russell Vought “a right-wing absolute zealot,” described Vice President J. D. Vance as “a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” and attributed Elon Musk’s erratic style in gutting federal agencies to his “avowed ketamine” use.
Yet no one on the right is calling for anyone to resign, or even for a congressional investigation into these allegations. That is not because Wiles—who is credited with largely masterminding Trump’s victorious presidential campaign—lacks credibility, nor is it because she has denied these comments (she has accused the magazine of taking her words out of context, which is what people say when they know they were recorded). It is simply because these quotes, while dire, are also unsurprising. Wiles did not say anything that Republicans didn’t already know. Her error lay in the breach between what Trump’s supporters understand and what they are permitted to say.
To grasp the moral abnormality of this state of affairs, let’s try a thought experiment. Suppose Joe Biden’s chief of staff had told a reporter that the president at least sometimes charged his political enemies with federal crimes because he didn’t like them, and that his most influential officials were ideological zealots, conspiracy theorists, and drug users.
I can imagine two possible responses to such an interview. One is to conclude that the chief of staff had gone crazy and should be fired immediately. The other is to consider the allegations worthy of investigation in order to assess whether the president is fit to hold the powers of the presidency. What I can’t imagine concluding is that the allegations were true and that Biden could continue going on his merry way as president.
Yet this is the Republican Party’s response. The Trump administration swiftly rolled out a series of tributes attesting to Wiles’s loyalty and blaming the “fake news” media for her comments. “The radical left is at it again, trying to create discord on President Trump’s team. It won’t work because we know & love @SusieWiles,” tweeted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who added: “As someone who actually works closely with Susie, I can attest that she is brilliant, tough as nails, and is 100% dedicated to President Trump & America.”
Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration, called Wiles “a brilliant strategist who leads the Cabinet with grace and grit, even in the face of relentless fake news.” Donald Trump Jr. wrote a long testimonial calling Wiles “by far the most effective and trustworthy Chief of Staff that my father has ever had,” neglecting to even mention the inconvenient revelations.
[Jonathan Chait: The conservative movement’s intellectual collapse]
Outside of the administration, Trump’s media defenders have responded by angrily castigating Wiles for opening her mouth to the media. “Genuinely sick to death of people on the right who seek the approval of left-wing media. Or even play with them for a minute. I can’t take it. It’s the saddest fetish,” complained the Federalist editor Mollie Hemingway. “You talked to them. What did you expect?” scolded National Review’s Dan McLaughlin.
These esteemed members of the conservative press appear untroubled over whether the Trump administration is in fact filled with crackpots who commit grave abuses of power. Their anger is reserved for Wiles for admitting as much to the “lamestream” media.
In this way, the most remarkable revelation from these newly published interviews comes not from what Wiles did or didn’t say, but in how Trump and his enablers are spinning it. Comments that would have precipitated a crisis in any other presidency are now simply being dismissed—knowingly, cynically—as “fake news.”