
Susie Wiles and Trump in the White House, November 2024. Photo: White House.
Two days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the New York Times ran a guest essay by Chris Whipple titled “Susie Wiles is Trump’s Best Hope” that couldn’t be more obtuse. Whipple argues that Wiles has demonstrated an “uncanny ability to impose discipline” on Donald Trump and may “well be Trump’s best hope of having an effective presidency.” Whipple concluded that Wiles may “well represent the thin line between the president and disaster.” He offers no evidence for any of this other than the fact that Wiles told House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries that she has heard stories about Trump’s tumultuous first term but that “he’s a new man.”
Whipple credits Wiles with adopting the approach of the legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, who would “grind out victories one down at a time with three yards and a cloud of dust.” But I remember the Woody Hayes who had a well-earned reputation for losing his temper, and eventually lost his job for punching players—his own as well as opposition players.
In the wake of Whipple’s essay, we have witnessed one political disaster after another, and we’re not even two weeks into Trump’s second term. Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentence of 1,600 rioters who assaulted the Capitol in the name of Donald Trump. Trump has not only eliminated the offices and removed the officers who were associated with various initiatives dealing with diversity, equity and inclusion, but he has ordered public servants to report civil servants who were not carrying out his orders. On January 29th, the Department of Justice fired more than a dozen prosecutors who work on special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutions of Donald Trump.
Over the weekend, Trump removed 17 or 18 inspectors general, including a few he had appointed in his first term. (I will write about this issue in my next essay for CounterPunch.) This act was a violation of a 1978 law passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which requires presidents to provide Congress the “reasons for any such removal” at least 30 days beforehand. Trump claimed that his actions were a “very common thing to do,” but the removal of independent inspectors general of nearly every Cabinet-level agency was unprecedented and opens the door to an expansion of fraud, abuse, waste, and lawlessness at these agencies.
Trump not only has shown himself able to break the laws of this country, but he also has pursued actions that would violate the Constitution. He has trashed the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees automatic or birthright citizenship to all children born in the United States. It took a federal judge several days to temporarily block the executive order dismissing birthright citizenship, which he called a “blatantly unconstitutional order.” The Supreme Court will have to resolve this issue, but the order was one more example of Chief of Staff Wiles being unable to monitor the thin line between the president and a political disaster.
Wiles is not only unable or unwilling to tell the president “No,” but there are too many influential voices around Trump who appear successful in encouraging the president to challenge U.S. law and the Constitution itself, favor the seizure of the Panama Canal or Greenland or renaming the Gulf of Mexico or making Canada the 51st state. Susie Wiles is clearly not “Trump’s best hope” after all. She may be an effective administrative officer, but she has given no indication she disagrees with or seeks to temper Trump’s wildest intentions.
It isn’t certain that Wiles is even interested in moderating Donald Trump, but in any event there are too many Trump cronies who are encouraging and supporting his worst instincts. This list starts with Wiles’ deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who is the most dangerous holdover from the first Trump term. Miller is the strongest supporter of Trump’s brutal immigration policies, and according to The Nation, the “vindictive face of MAGA’s xenophobia and grievance politics.” Miller is central to the Trump effort to gain a measure of revenge in his second term.
Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, is dedicated to ending civil service job protections for tens of thousands of federal employees, replacing them with political appointees who would be Trump loyalists. With Vought’s encouragement, Trump has withdrawn the security clearances of more than 50 former national security officials. Even before Trump had completed his oath of office at the inauguration, Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz ordered his national security staff to leave the National Security Council, return home, and wait for further orders. Trump also removed the security protection for several former officials in the Trump and Biden administrations, including the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, even though Trump’s accusations in most cases had led to the threat to their lives and the lives of their families.
Finally, there is Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s longtime legal fixer who followed in the footsteps of Michael Cohen. Like Vought and Miller, Epshteyn is a devoted Trump loyalist who organized the appointment of Scott Bessent to be the Secretary of the Treasury; the nomination of Pam Bondi as Attorney General; and the effort to make Kash Patel the director of the FBI. Like Vought and Miller, Epshteyn tells Trump “what he wants to hear,” according to Politico.
Susie Wiles couldn’t control any of these individuals, let alone Donald Trump. It is possible that she may be one of the powers behind the throne; those who know her contend that she has a Machiavellian streak. Like the others in the Trump camp, Wiles is far more concerned with carrying out Trump’s commitment to vengeance and domination than with assuring that there will be a smooth political operation in the White House. Wiles surely would like to be Trump’s only chief of staff, but presumably she remembers that he had four chiefs in his first term.