White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is grappling with a controversy of her own making after she made a number of startling admissions in a series of interviews with Vanity Fair.

In an article published Tuesday that drew on 11 interviews with Wiles over the past year, the chief of staff offered blunt assessments of Attorney General Pam Bondi, Vice President Vance and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and she made a few surprising acknowledgements about President Trump’s targeting of his critics and his plans for Venezuela.

It has created a rare instance where Wiles — a loyal operator who stays behind the scenes and earned the nickname “ice maiden” — has been at the center of the story. But while Trump cycled through top staff rapidly in his first term, those close to the White House cast doubt on the idea he would move on from Wiles over the Vanity Fire controversy.

“First things first: In no way is her job in danger. All indications are that she is doing a tremendous job, and everyone likes her, including the president. Plus, there doesn’t seem to be anyone angling to get rid of her. So, she absolutely stays as chief. And should,” said Mick Mulvaney, who served as Trump’s acting chief of staff for more than a year during his first term.

“Was it a mistake to sit down for 11 on-the-record interviews with a Trump-hating outfit like Vanity Fair? Absolutely,” Mulvaney added. “And it probably fails the ‘how does this help the president?’ test. Everyone makes mistakes. But this one is far from fatal. It doesn’t change the fact that she is very good at her job.”

In a sign of Wiles’s sway within the building, the White House and its allies quickly activated in unison to come to her defense, including some of the officials she swiped at in the Vanity Fire article.

“I’ve seen so many people who will say one thing to the president’s face — Democrats and Republicans — and then will do the exact opposite behind the scenes. And you know why I really love Susie Wiles? Because Susie is who she is in the president’s presence, she’s the same exact person when the president isn’t around,” Vance, who Wiles described as “a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” said during an event in Pennsylvania.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who Wiles told Vanity Fair had “whiffed” in her initial handling of the documents surrounding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, praised the chief of staff as her “dear friend.”

“Any attempt to undermine and downplay President Trump’s monumental achievements will fail,” Bondi posted on the social platform X. “We are family. We are united.”

Trump told the New York Post that he had not read the Vanity Fair article, but that Wiles has done a “fantastic job.” Wiles described Trump to Vanity Fair as having “an alcoholic’s personality,” a description Trump said he did not disagree with.

Trump during his first term infamously clashed with his chiefs of staff as they sought to control his impulses and the flow of information to the Oval Office. The president cycled through four chiefs of staff in four years, with his first choice for the job, Reince Priebus, lasting six months.

But Wiles came to the job having already built a rapport with Trump. She worked on his 2016 campaign, leading successful efforts to win Florida. And she headed up his 2024 operation at a time when Trump was in the political wilderness, something the president’s inner circle is quick to point out.

Within the White House, she has a reputation for knowing how to manage the various personalities in Trump’s orbit and for picking her battles with the president without attempting to control his impulses.

“I very rarely speak out about my father’s staffers, but there is no one on Earth more equipped to serve my father as Chief of Staff than Susie,” Donald Trump Jr. posted Tuesday on X.

Wiles’s comments to Vanity Fair dominated the conversation in Washington on Tuesday. 

She told the outlet she was “initially aghast” at how Musk, as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, had gone about dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, describing the SpaceX founder as an “odd, odd duck” and “avowed ketamine” user.

She described a “loose agreement” she had with Trump that the president would move on from settling scores with his rivals after 90 days in office and later acknowledged Trump’s push to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) “might be the one” case of outright retribution.

She said there was “a huge disagreement” over whether Trump’s April rollout of sweeping tariffs on other nations was a good idea. And Wiles said Trump’s plan for Venezuela was to continue targeting alleged drug boats “until [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro cries uncle.”

The story generated so much attention that Wiles posted for the first time on X since October 2024 to dismiss it as a “disingenuously framed hit piece” that left out “significant context.”

“I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team,” Wiles posted.

The White House launched a seemingly coordinated response to the Vanity Fair piece, with practically every Cabinet official issuing a statement to praise Wiles and accuse the news outlet of attempting to distract from the president’s agenda.

Those criticisms came despite the fact Wiles was one of multiple top-level White House officials to participate in a photo shoot with Vanity Fair and speak with author Chris Whipple over the course of the year. Others included Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, deputy chief of staff James Blair, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Leavitt on Tuesday pointed to the “groundswell of support” for Wiles from within the White House and on Capitol Hill.

“[Trump has] been able to accomplish so much because of his leadership and his tenacity, but also because of chief of staff Wiles leadership and her ability to effectuate his agenda,” Leavitt said.