Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Says He Has an ‘Alcoholic’s Personality’ — but He Doesn’t Drink

The strategist credited with helping President Donald Trump return to the White House offered unusually blunt assessments of the president and several top officials in a series of interviews with Vanity Fair.

Chief of staff Susie Wiles spoke with the magazine over the course of Trump’s first year back in office; Vanity Fair published her remarks in a two-part series on Tuesday, Dec. 16. Among her most eyebrow-raising observations, Wiles, 68, said Trump has what she described as an “alcoholic’s personality.”

“Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say. But high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink,” Wiles told Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple. “And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.”

Of Trump, 79, Wiles said he “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

Wiles also connected her perspective to her own family history, saying her father struggled with alcoholism, later went into treatment, and remained sober for more than two decades before his death in 2013.

“Alcoholism does bad things to relationships, and so it was with my dad and me,” Wiles said.

Trump has long said he abstains from drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. In 2015, he said his brother Fred Jr.’s struggles with alcohol shaped his own approach to drinking: “He would tell me, ‘Don’t drink ever.’ He understood the problem that he had and that it was a very hard problem.”

Epstein files become a flashpoint inside the administration

Wiles also addressed key figures in Trump’s second administration—including Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi—while discussing one of the most contentious issues of the term: the release of the Epstein files.

After months of resisting their release, Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law in November, directing the Justice Department to publish “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ’s possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein.”

Wiles said some officials grasped the political and cultural weight of the move.

“The people that really appreciated what a big deal this is are Kash [Patel] and [FBI deputy director] Dan Bongino,” she said. “Because they lived in that world.”

She then added, “And the vice president, who’s been a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” without offering further explanation in the excerpted remarks.

Wiles was particularly critical of Bondi’s early rollout of materials tied to the files, after the attorney general distributed binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” to a group of conservative influencers at the White House in February.

“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said. “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”

Wiles fires back after publication

After the series was published Tuesday, Wiles responded on X, calling the two-part piece “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”

“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team,” she wrote.

Wiles continued, “The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!”