The co-hosts of The View are not buying Susie Wiles’s story that her bombshell Vanity Fair interview, in which the White House chief of staff disparaged the administration appointed by her boss, Donald Trump, was taken out of context.
Throughout 11 interviews with journalist Chris Whipple, Wiles criticized Trump’s first year in office and described the president as having an “alcoholic’s personality.” She labeled Vice President JD Vance as a “conspiracy theorist,” and called Elon Musk an “avowed ketamine” user who slept in a sleeping bag.
Shortly after the two-part profile was published Tuesday, Wiles issued a statement saying that her remarks were taken out of context and that the story was a “hit piece” aiming to bring down Trump — but former Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin thinks that the notoriously tough strategist shared the fiery remarks on purpose.
Griffin, 36, told her TV co-hosts on ABC’s popular talk show that she predicts Wiles is preparing to leave Trump’s administration in the rumored turnover expected in the cabinet next year.
“I think she was intentional in this,” Griffin said, speculating that Wiles “may be thinking of leaving next year.”
She hypothesized: “I think she wanted to put on the record some things she didn’t agree with. She criticized the tariffs. She basically explained they shouldn’t have gone the way they did. She criticized cutting USAID, which gutted American soft power, and the handling of the Epstein files.”
Griffin said the “juiciest part” of the story for her was the contrast in Wiles’ evaluations of Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The co-host noted that while Wiles critiqued many of her colleagues, she appeared to only have praise for Rubio as she spoke of his sincerity and strong principles. The apparent soft spot led Griffin to believe that Wiles will be working for Rubio when the 2028 presidential election rolls around, though Rubio has dodged questions about his potential run.
“[Wiles] basically calls the vice president an opportunist, more or less, and basically says he’s a conspiracy theorist,” Griffin said about the article. “So I’m looking at 2028, and Susie Wiles, the most important Republican political operative in America, is squarely team Rubio.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin agreed with Griffin about Wiles knowingly doing the piece and added that Wiles was worried about “preserving her legacy” so “she can have a future in politics.”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung responded to Griffin’s speculation with the following insult shared with The Independent: “Alyssa Farah Griffin is a stone-cold loser who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted her pea-sized brain. Instead of hanging around the Bombay Club, she should say thank you to President Trump and the entire White House.”
Wiles has so far insisted the article was a "disingenuously framed hit piece.”
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” Wiles wrote on X. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”
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