Susie’s Assessment: Failure after Failure
The right wing response to the Vanity Fair profile of Susie Wiles (one, two) reveals a lot about the structure of Trump’s power.
While there’s nothing surprising in the profile, Chris Whipple caught Wiles admitting to failures those of outside the White House bubble all recognize, or making laughably false claims to cover them up. And while mostly the response to the profile has been a typical beltway feeding frenzy, much of the focus has been on those expressions of truth or false claims, including how some of them — Wiles’ claims that Trump was targeting Letitia James, her confession that Trump is seeking regime change in Venezuela, Trump’s awareness that Putin wants all of Ukraine — could have lasting legal and political repercussions.
Not so the right wing, though. Theirs has been a two-fold response: first, declaring not that the profile got anything wrong, much less made up any of the abundant direct quotes, but instead that they remain loyal to Susie Wiles. After everyone had performed their expression of loyalty, the right wing turned to complaining that photographer Christopher Anderson captured Trump’s aides’ ugliness and warts.
Behind those expressions of loyalty and vanity complaints, however, the profile includes a string of confessions that Trump, that Susie Wiles, that they all have failed.
Circling the motherfucking wagons
The immediate response was a performance of loyalty. First Wiles claimed in a (for her) very rare tweet that the profile had taken things out of context and ignored positive things she said. Then one after another Trump loyalist RTed that tweet and testified to how great she is and how loyal they are to her or she is to Trump.
The loyalty oaths were particularly amusing to watch through Chris LaCivita’s eyes. First he RTed Wiles’ tweet.
Then he tried to distract with yesterday’s scandal.
Then he posted one…
After another declaration of loyalty to Wiles. This Don Jr tweet — “When others cowered, she stood strong” is quite long and amusing in the original.
Scott Bessent’s claim of inaccuracy is especially notable given how Wiles described half of Trump’s advisors to be opposed to Trump’s tariffs (as I’ll show below).
LaCivita thought dumb boomerang memes would be persuasive.
More celebration of blind loyalty.
Failures hailing her role in their failure.
All leading up to this tweet, from the lady who used to pretend to be objective but now works with the former Trump spox who tried to hide behind the shrubbery, once.
Rachael Bade really did claim it was a big scoop to describe a “Wiles loyalist and Trump ally” explaining what was visible on Xitter for all to see as “circling the motherfucking wagons.”
Sure. It’s clear that’s what you were doing. But honestly, a good many people who read the profiles weren’t seeking to split the White House, they were seeking to understand what Trump’s low-key Chief of Staff does or thinks.
The loyalty that prevents you from seeing the failures she confessed doesn’t prevent us from seeing them.
Karoline Leavitt’s nasty gender-affirming care
Then people started complaining about the photography, particular a picture that revealed the slop on Karoline Leavitt’s face and the injection marks in her lips.
WaPo did a great interview with the photographer, Christopher Anderson, where he explained his view of photojournalism and truth.
I want to talk to you about the portraits that you did for Vanity Fair. As I assume you have heard, they’ve caused a bit of a splash on social media. Can you tell me how you conceived of them?
I conceived of it many years ago. I did a whole book of American politics called “Stump” (2014), where I did all close-ups. It was my attempt to circumnavigate the stage-managed image of politics and cut through the image that the public relations team wants to be presented, and get at something that feels more revealing about the theater of politics. It’s something I’ve been doing for a long time. I have done it to all sides of the political spectrum, not just Republicans. It’s part of how I think about portraiture in a lot of ways: close, intimate, revealing.
[snip]
The images are really arresting. What is your response to people who say that these images are unfair? There’s been a lot of attention about Karoline Leavitt’s lips and [what appear to be] injection sites.
I didn’t put the injection sites on her. People seem to be shocked that I didn’t use Photoshop to retouch out blemishes and her injection marks. I find it shocking that someone would expect me to retouch out those things.
[snip]
Were they coming camera-ready, or was there a hair-and-makeup team?
Most of them came camera-ready or with their own hair-and-makeup team. Karoline Leavitt has her own personal groomer that was there.
I mean, we don’t know if Karoline Leavitt still has that groomer today now that the photos are published.
Well, what can I say? That’s the makeup that she puts on, those are the injections she gave herself. If they show up in a photo, what do you want me to say? I don’t know if it says something about the world we live in, the age of Photoshop, the age of AI filters on your Instagram, but the fact that the internet is freaking out because they’re seeing real photos and not retouched ones says something to me.
Click through for the great quote about Stephen Miller’s plea for kindness.
The self-deceptions and truths from within the bubble
But none of this pushback — none of it — claims that lifelong chronicler of Chiefs of Staff Chris Whipple ever made up a quote.
Accordingly, that means no one has disputed Wiles’ admission that Trump’s policies have largely failed.
Here’s how Whipple summarized Trump’s term so far, close to the beginning of part one:
It’s been a busy year. Trump and his team have expanded the limits of presidential power, unilaterally declared war on drug cartels, imposed tariffs according to whim, sealed the southern border, achieved a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza, and pressured NATO allies into increasing their defense spending.
At the same time, Trump has waged war on his political enemies; pardoned the January 6 rioters, firing nearly everyone involved in their investigation and prosecution; sued media companies into multimillion-dollar settlements; indicted multiple government officials he perceives as his foes; and pressured universities to toe his line. He’s redefined the way presidents behave—verbally abusing women, minorities, and almost anyone who offends him. Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September turbocharged Trump’s campaign of revenge and retribution. Critics have compared this moment to a Reichstag fire, a modern version of Hitler’s exploitation of the torching of Berlin’s parliament.
How he tells this story — though Wiles’ own assessments of Trump’s success or failure — is more interesting. The following, save the last one, are presented in the order Whipple addresses them in the profile.
End the congressional filibuster and remove Nicolás Maduro from power. [A November portrayal; results still TBD]
The agenda was twofold: ending the congressional filibuster and forcing Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from power.
Pardon just those who were January 6 “happenstancers.” [Wiles lies to cover up her failure to achieve this goal]
Wiles explained: “In every case, of the ones he was looking at, in every case, they had already served more time than the sentencing guidelines would have suggested. So given that, I sort of got on board.” (According to court records, many of the January 6 rioters pardoned by Trump had received sentences that were lighter than the guidelines.) “There have been a couple of times where I’ve been outvoted,” Wiles said. “And if there’s a tie, he wins.”
Preserve parts of USAID. [Complete failure, but one Marco Rubio is lying about]
Musk forged ahead—all throttle, no brake. “Elon’s attitude is you have to get it done fast. If you’re an incrementalist, you just won’t get your rocket to the moon,” Wiles said. “And so with that attitude, you’re going to break some china. But no rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody.”
[snip]
Did Rubio have any regrets about the untold number of lives that PEPFAR’s evisceration might cost? “No. First of all, whoever says that, it’s just not being accurate,” he told me. “We are not eviscerating PEPFAR.
Stephen Miller’s deportation policies. [In Wiles’ estimation, a failure]
Not long after the El Salvador deportation fiasco, in Louisiana, ICE agents arrested and deported two mothers, along with their children, ages seven, four, and two, to Honduras. The children were US citizens and the four-year-old was being treated for stage 4 cancer. Wiles couldn’t explain it.
“It could be an overzealous Border Patrol agent, I don’t know,” she said of the case, in which both mothers had reportedly been arrested after voluntarily attending routine immigration meetings. “I can’t understand how you make that mistake, but somebody did.”
Tariffs. [Wiles failed to prevent Trump’s worst instincts and the results have been worse than she imagined]
Wiles believed a middle ground on tariffs would ultimately succeed, she said, “but it’s been more painful than I expected.”
Invading blue cities. [Wiles says Trump won’t do this to stay in power]
Will the president use the military to suppress or even prevent voting during the midterms and beyond?
“I say it is categorically false, will not happen, it’s just wrongheaded,” she snapped.
November’s election. [Wiles knew they were in trouble, but even so was overoptimistic]
Wiles thought the GOP had a chance of electing the governor in New Jersey, but she knew they were in for a tough night.
The Epstein files. [Trump and Kash, both lying about what was in the files but that’s okay because MAGAts aren’t obsessed with Epstein]
For years, Kash has been saying, ‘Got to release the files, got to release the files.’ And he’s been saying that with a view of what he thought was in these files that turns out not to be right.”
[snip]
Wiles said. “It’s the Joe Rogan listeners. It’s the people that are sort of new to our world. It’s not the MAGA base.”
Murderboats and frivolous wars. [Pure self-deception]
“Not that he wanted to kill people necessarily, but stopping the killing wasn’t his first thought. It’s his first and last thought now.”
[snip]
“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.”
Russian peace efforts. [Wiles says they’re lying about Russia wanting peace]
Trump’s team was divided on whether Putin’s goal was anything less than a complete Russian takeover of Ukraine. “The experts think that if he could get the rest of Donetsk, then he would be happy,” Wiles told me in August. But privately, Trump wasn’t buying it—he didn’t believe Putin wanted peace. “Donald Trump thinks he wants the whole country,” Wiles told me.
In October I asked Rubio if that was true. “There are offers on the table right now to basically stop this war at its current lines of contact, okay?” he said. “Which include substantial parts of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which they’ve controlled since 2014. And the Russians continue to turn it down. And so…you do start to wonder, well, maybe what this guy wants is the entire country.” (In Wiles’s office is a photograph of Trump and Putin standing together, signed by Trump: “TO SUSIE YOU ARE THE GREATEST! DONALD.”)
Trump would only spend 90 days on retribution. [Wiles is in denial]
“Yes, I do,” she’d replied. “We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over.”
In late August, I asked Wiles: “Remember when you said to me months ago that Trump promised to end the revenge and retribution tour after 90 days?”
“I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour,” she said.
Trump’s biggest accomplishments: Peace and the Big Ugly
“I think the country is beginning to see that he’s proud to be an agent of peace. I think that surprises people. Doesn’t surprise me, but it doesn’t fit with the Donald Trump people think they know. I think this legislation [the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill], which funded the entire domestic agenda, is a huge accomplishment. And even though it isn’t popular in total, the component parts of it are. And that will be a very big deal in the midterms.”
That is, like the Epstein scandal more generally, Wiles either invents bubble-wrapped fictions about Trump’s own success, or concedes she, or Trump, has failed.
But Trump’s aides — the people complicit in this failure — don’t care.
They’re just going to circle the motherfucking wagons and demand loyalty.
“Circling the wagons.”
More like circling the drain.
There was one — and only one — attack on the accuracy of Whipple’s quotes, as cited in the NYT:
The immortal words of James Comey came to mind as I smiled and thought, “Lordy, there *are* tapes.”
And with one little quote, buried in the NYT piece, that whole “I never said that” line of attack disappeared. Completely. That’s a blow to the usual rightwing arsenal for defending themselves, and they are floundering about what to do having been disarmed like that.
The operation of a country, a foreign policy, a military is exceptionally dependent on acknowledging a vast series of interlocked processes. There are knock-on effects to every single decision and policy an administration takes. Team Trump seems to have adopted the position that this fact does not exist for any other reason than they are making the decisions. Susie Wiles is telegraphing that she understands this – she was willing to “let” Trump go after his enemies for 90 days, because she knew that impacts were inevitable, etc. But at the end of the day, Trump just operates by whim and urge and people she describes as zealots fill in the gaps, again without thought of the collapsed process – and the unforeseen damage – behind it. She is just the highest placed person in our current government who knows its a shitshow, and the interviews felt in an odd way like an apology for what has been done, complete with the defensiveness that admitting failure brings.
Miller: ““You know, you have a lot of power in the discretion you use to be kind to people.”
Anderson: And I looked at him and I said, “You know, you do, too.”
That was a really powerful mic drop, took my breath away after reading how Anderson only held up a mirror to his subjects by photographing at close range and publishing unairbrushed.
For me the mic drop was Stephen Fucking Miller saying something THAT stupid and lacking in self-awareness in the first place. He was asking for it. Anderson really didn’t have to say a word.
I think Anderson being a moral and ethical person was compelled to respond. It’s not exactly punching a Nazi but it was holding a fascist trafficker, torturer, and murderer accountable after having the unmitigated gall to expect kindness. It had to be said.
It made me think of Army special counsel Joseph Welch’s remark to Sen. Joe McCarthy during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearing; Welch could have let McCarthy slide after all of McCarthy’s obvious lies but Welch morally and ethically couldn’t, asking, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” It had to be said.
So much there.
“Kind” for Miller means going along with the game.
From what I understand “kind” implies empathy and that ain’t in his vocabulary or neurological makeup.
OT, but as a possible note about Donnie’s purported $1776 bonus for service members.
Is he changing the taxability of the funds by changing them from a housing subsidy to a bonus? And. if he’s turning it into a taxable bonus, isn’t Mr. Trump effectively clawing back part of the congressional authorization?
In other words, is it a gambit to give service members less?
That is indeed the effect. “Pay” is taxable although with stuff like combat pay and its ilk the rules are modified (there are parts of the 1040 that address this). Since this is intended to be across the board, it would be considered ordinary pay (subject to how the legislative sausage emerges). For example, my nuclear power bonus was indeed taxable.
Allowances are not taxable, and are usually intended to cover cost differences for where one serves and/or dependents. This is a case where words mean things. It’s all listed out in the Leave and Earnings Statement (LES) by whatever name it exists now. Fun fact, I actually had to use my last LES to stand in for the missing W-2 when I separated. The IRS was OK with it.
It’s more frightening that Trump has a useless babysitter who tells herself she’s in control than to have no babysitter at all. I just assumed they were all enablers happily fulfilling toddler Trump’s demands. Now I’m thinking she’s a halfway competent one who helps the enablers without any ability to stop the bad things. I’d prefer 100% incompetence.
And it should be noted that righties are sheep who think they’re getting talking points to fool others but they’re really repeating marching orders telling them how to act. When they say they’re circling the wagons and that the VF article is just about dividing them, that’s not really for our benefit. That’s how the LLM’s inside their heads are given prompts, by making them think they’re tricking people. When you tell them to say they’re loyal as a talking point it makes them be loyal. And when they say only deranged people criticize Trump that’s from an order telling them not to criticize Trump. This is how their mind virus spreads to contrarians who otherwise don’t like being told what to do.
She, like Donnie, swore and oath to the Constitution, but that fact doesn’t seem to dawn her. She is 100% behind his approach and my take is she is arrogant enough to tell us so in the VF spread.
My SO wanted to listen to Slate’s Political Gabfest last night and I grudgingly acquiesced only to see if John DIckerson was still on the show and much to my surprise he was. I like John Dickerson’s history, observations and clear love for this country when he speaks about the role of government and specifically the COS position in his episodes, but alas he has been passed over at CBS. John is very concerned while Emily B. and John P. have the most obtuse takes on almost every issue and they did not disappoint.
John P. was marveling at the effectiveness of delivering on this President’s whims and the lack of turnover in this administration. I am countering his argument by saying all these creeps need a pardon and Susie knows it.
I’m still mystified why Wiles did the VF interview at all. Who thought there was going to be an upside? She’s not nearly as smart or savvy as she thinks she is.
If they just wanted more loyalty spectacles, have another goddamn Cabinet meeting. Circle-jerking the wagons, indeed.
I have a suspicion VF is sitting on a story or stories Wiles knows are damaging to Trump and she’s tried to innoculate against them by both breadcrumbing failures and “circle-jerking the wagons.”
Timing of this VF article focused on Wiles suggests there’s more ugliness to come about the Epstein files.
May your prescience be rewarded in spades.
..the kind that dig (political/rhetorical) graves.
reply to Rayne:
VF is definitely sitting on the Stephen Miller part of the story. Which is the core: Miller has directed policy since January 20. It’s embarrassing how the press has let themselves be distracted* by this shiny bauble. I’m sure that was largely its purpose from the WH perspective.
*from the very real possibility of war; Epstein; imploding economy.
I’s say that like most Trump sycophants, she’s arrogant, puffed-up, “proud” (no doubt a white nationalist) and thinks she’s smarter than everybody else, because she is –sort of, sometimes– able to manipulate a psychotic moron like Trump. And she doesn’t even do that very well. Her story is of failure after failure to persuade him to behave like a sane person.
She thought she would shine in the interviews. The world would gasp at her magnificence.
A big part of it is Whipple does CoS history. Reince Priebus warned Wiles against this. But I suspect she couldn’t resist.
To be fair, she is (inexcusably) the first woman CoS. So if I were her I would want to see how I matched up.
Dept of Idle Chatter:
At what point do we concede that we have a Manchurian candidate here, and at what point do we concede that Wiles is a part, a “wily” one, of the team of his handlers? The disarming image: grey-haired grandmother, no botox bimbo –
Seems unlikely any of this VF hoohah is not by design, someone’s design.
The fuck Wiles isn’t botoxed. The entire center of her forehead is as smooth as plate glass — for starters.
I have a document from discovery with a handwritten note on it by Susie. Even without that communication, it is a very interesting document.
There is a very long story and sequence of events that followed. But the most immediate was that I was suspended, then later demoted. Consequently, I chose to go to the Civil Service Board to exhaust my administrative remedies.
That’s when an attorney informed me of something he claimed Susie did prior to the hearing. It wasn’t a courtroom with a jury. It was a quasi-official board hearing. So, the attorney didn’t call what she did jury tampering. But he did call it a kangaroo court.
As I mentioned before, when I finally made it to federal court, the judge was from out-of-district (he had once been on the OKC bombing case.) Even after I lost in court, the City settled my case (2 jurors were so irate about whatever happened in the jury room that they called my attorneys to complain.)
So, lots of hinky things happened. Plus, it cost the City hundreds of thousands of dollars when it all could have been resolved from the very beginning. And, ironically, the City was simultaneously resolving another related issue that was taking place in another department.
Interestingly, I was able to improve things for the City’s risk management by getting the Dept. of Education to provide training for all staff and by getting policy changed. But, unfortunately, that cost me a great deal personally.
One of my earliest comments on emptywheel pertained to Susie. But, at that time, there was a great deal of trolling here and it took a long time to break through. But now you can see what might have prompted that benign tumor to grow on my adrenal gland, causing me to end up in the ICU. Not so hard to imagine anymore.
Pheochromocytoma? That’s not what I would call “benign”! They can kill! (Multiple endocrine neoplasia here. Pituitary, thyroid, ovary, and I’m forgetting one but so far nothing adrenal.)
#tu
ICU. And I raise a point of clarification. Not Pheochromocytoma. It was Cushing Syndrome. An endogenous tumor, so not caused by medications or taking steroids. My body produced an excessive amount of cortisol all by itself. I believe it was due to all the work abuse I encountered.
Then I had a doctor who told me to stop complaining. So I went to a private clinic and paid a substantial sum out of pocket to have a thorough checkup. They found the tumor in a scan.
Not long after that my doctor left his practice to pursue another interest. In his defense, my case was atypical and I didn’t have many of the symptoms. But I did have frequent severe migraines. My surgeon told me that it was a rare occurrence, about 1 in 500,000.
Trump and his retribution. “Trump Derangement Syndrome” should be defined as looking at Trump and believing he and his followers represent Christian values.
For Leavitt’s close-up, Lisandra does not disappoint.
https://youtube.com/shorts/9e6xp_Kg35M
https://youtube.com/shorts/vrh6B1Jlkco
https://youtube.com/shorts/pWf0HCO5Z54
“But no rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody.”
How sickening, utterly sickening. No comprehension of soft power, influence, or supporting our own farmers and industries. Only bully-power and persecution.
“Stupid, crazy and evil”: the perfect Trumpian.
I _think_ Wiles, in her unpracticed-at-interviews way, meant that the DOGE-USAID hack-and-slobber process was bad.
But I wouldn’t bet more than a nickel on that.
Make America Greed Again
The American standard version
of how Persona ditched the Person
incorporates some immersion
into coercion and diversion.
That’s not to say desertion
was the least bit less urgent
but only to cast aspersion
on thinking things can’t worsen.
The Person found Persona
at a dive bar in Daytona.
They shared a cold Corona
and yakked about Estonia.
Then they both were shown a
live shark that had grown a
foot by a man in a kimono
who claimed to be the owner.
Soon Persona Non Grata
entered too and got caught up
where the talk, like fierce lava,
was spewing up far hotter.
This was no bourgeois drama
with “thank you” and “de nada,”
This was more like “not gonna.”
Destination rock bottom.
And, so it was. Lesson learned:
Persona’s fate was well earned,
The Person was duly spurned,
Persona Non Grata, burned.
But everyone else still yearned
to murmur of the concerned
who wanted it all adjourned
as if the world had not turned.
6/8/19
When you reprise old masterpieces it’s like listening to one of those rock radio stations with “hits from the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s!” I take in the lines and get sent back to memories of the first time, and what was going on then. One of these days you’re gonna put one up that dates to before my time on EW and my experience will be totally different: A Bright New Thing!
My favorite part of this one is the “dive bar in Daytona” stanza, which feels like it was written before time itself began, just as dive bars in Daytona seem eternal. I wish I could write like you. The fact that I can’t (I’ve tried–too discursive) makes me appreciate your work that much more.
Someone’s elective surgery is not news.
No, but now that it’s out, I want to know the backstory on ‘Those lips. Those lips!’
I have a couple theories about Trump and his merry band of brothers and sisters. People adhere to the theory that Trump chose loyalists to fill out his coterie and that they are fulfilling his wishes. I think it is much more evil than that. I think Trump’s supporters recognized how easy it would be to convince an already predisposed and declining Trump of their own intents, to use him to institute those intents, and they worked hard to get into their positions for this purpose. They know they will never have the kind of power themselves to effect their intents but Trump is the perfect agent. Stephen Miller and Russell Vought are next to supreme in this effort.
Susan Wiles is supreme in the Edith Wilson and Nancy Reagan way. She is the most powerful political woman in the country. She knows it. She worked Trump like a drum to get into this position The interview was her way of telling everyone, especially those she singled out in the interview, she is Edith Wilson or Nancy Reagan and that she has Trump’s ear all the time.
Lord Acton: Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Susan Wiles loves absolute power. Trump is her only means of achieving what she thinks that is.
Accurate assessment, IMO. Neither Vought or Miller could get elected to public office because they are as repulsive in person as they are in policy. Wiles has somehow managed to hit the sweet spot between appearing like the empty-headed aging blonde coterie of bimbette hangers-on at Mar-a-Lago and the grunts who carry out Trump’s dirty work without splashing back on him (so far).
You may be right, but maneuvering to elevate a mental case to fuehrer in the belief that the smart ones behind the curtain can pull the strings has a really bad track record.
A friend of mine says trump has the attention span of a squirrel, and Jen Psaki says attention span of a goldfish, but that’s not true. He has idees fixes. Windmills, shower heads, tariffs and quite a few more. Nothing distracts him from those for long.
I have a hard time believing that any of the economic crowd around trump understands tariffs as anything other than a stupid tax, so they must have thought he would be distracted from them. More generally, his mercantilist understanding of economics.
Loyalty, although utter subservience might be more accurate, is the only virtue that trump is capable of recogizing in another person, but he finds it difficult to find such people. That’s why a few men are now wearing so many hats..
I think Trump’s mind works in stream of consciousness mode or LTIFTO: Last Thought In, First Thought Out. I don’t think he has idees fixes but rather a bunch of Pavlovian-like stimuli, like a Fox broadcast or a shower or a breeze or his own stream of consciousness process, that continually prompt his LTIFTO process.
Tariffs aren’t about taxes in Trump’s world. He is waging economic warfare on the world. There is no economic thinking crowd around him, just a societal, if not world, domination thinking crowd.
I think Trump confuses sycophancy with loyalty and so, given his diminishing mental state, is ripe for being used in a cold calculating way by the sycophants.
possible typo in: “How he tells this story — though Wiles’ own assessments of Trump’s success or failure — is more interesting.”
“though” or ‘through”?