In most ways, Donald Trump’s second term has been even more chaotic and extreme than the first. When he first entered the Oval Office, many of the people surrounding Trump were still career Republicans, rather than full-blown Maga loyalists. Lots of people around him pushed back on the President’s most extreme impulses.
In Trump 2.0, those checks and balances are gone. Everyone around Trump believes that what he says, goes, and the results are everywhere for people to see, from the demolished East Wing of the White House, to masked ICE agents roaming the country and grabbing people off the streets.
But while the country might be more chaotic than ever, the White House operation itself has been far quieter this time round. During Trump’s first term, everyone was constantly leaking to the media on virtually every issue, as rival factions contended for power. The churn of senior White House staff and even cabinet members was relentless.
The same has not, so far, been true of Trump’s second term. There have been some high-profile departures – like the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, and the disastrous five-day tenure of White House press secretary Katie Zacharia – but Trump two has leaked less, and turned over fewer staff.
The woman almost universally credited for that is Trump’s chief of staff, the veteran Florida political operative Susie Wiles. The story of how Wiles ended up as a key figure in the Trump orbit is a curious one: she formerly worked for the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis – Trump’s main challenger in the 2024 Republican primaries – but the two fell out in spectacular fashion, and Wiles offered her services to Trump instead, becoming one of his closest advisers.
Wiles has been credited with running a tight ship, ending the culture of relentless media briefings, and keeping most feuds internal. Wiles reportedly does not see it as her job to save Trump from some of his wildest impulses, but does operate a system of waiting to see if the President asks for something several times before actually doing it.
Some of the more obvious backfires and U-turns of the administration – such as Trump’s impulsive, failed bid to exclude multiple outlets from the White House press pool – happened while Wiles was absent, in this case recovering from treatment for breast cancer.
But with what could be – if the polls are correct – disastrous results in the midterms looming, cracks are beginning to form in the previously unified front Team Trump has managed to put forward.
Wiles, centre, with executive assistant Natalie Harp, far left, and short-lived White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, far right, walking to board Air Force One last week (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)The disastrous short tenure of Zacharia is one such fissure. After Zacharia’s abysmal first press briefing, stories appeared in the media suggesting Zacharia had been recommended to the President personally by Natalie Harp, the aide known as the “human printer” because of her habit of printing out social media posts to cheer up the President – who once allegedly jumped in the boot of a car, rather than travel separately from the presidential motorcade.
It was then suggested that Wiles was behind setting up a similarly calamitous Fox News interview slot for Zacharia to explain and defend her performance at the press briefing, which was generally held to have marked the point of no return for her in the role. Predictably, New York magazine has now suggested Zacharia was little more than a “pawn” in a power struggle between Wiles and Harp.
Other media outlets have suggested that Wiles might depart the White House – whether voluntarily or otherwise – shortly after the midterms. According to Politico, Trump has called friends and allies to ask their opinions about firing Wiles in order to bring in some new blood as chief of staff.
However, such reports have been flatly denied, with Trump telling Politico that Wiles “has my COMPLETE confidence” and condemning it as not caring about “facts, integrity, or honest journalism”. He insisted there was “zero chance” of Wiles being fired and added that she was “going to be here for a long time”.
On Monday, in an apparent show of support for his chief of staff, Trump named Wiles co-chair of a new White House taskforce on women’s health alongside First Lady Melania Trump. The President, signing an executive order to establish the agency, praised Wiles’ recent battle with breast cancer, calling her “tough” and “a tremendous fighter”.
Wiles told the New York Post the move had been “long planned”, adding on social media: “This is deeply personal to me. Having gone through breast cancer myself, I know firsthand the importance of early detection, medical research, and quality care. I am grateful to the President and First Lady for their commitment to helping women live longer, healthier lives.”
Trump, seated beside wife Melania, hands a pen to Wiles after signing an executive order at the White House on Monday to create a Women’s Health Division at the National Institutes of Health, and making Wiles co-chair of a White House taskforce on women’s health alongside the First Lady (Photo: Brendan Smailowski / AFP via Getty Images)However, Wiles’ new role has done nothing to dampen speculation about the worsening crisis and growing tensions among senior officials in the White House. Wiles has managed to keep a lid on the chaos Trump constantly generates for almost two years, but she may be running out of road as the machinery of politics turns against Trump.
The President is already a lame duck: he cannot run for another term, and any second-term president starts to see power and influence ebb away from them as everyone looks at who is likely to be in power next. Given that Trump is personally unpopular and may lose control of both houses of Congress within weeks, that phenomenon accelerates.
Everyone knows that Trump – and the Republican Party at large – will need someone to blame if the results are even close to being as bad as expected. That person cannot, of course, be Trump himself. He is not the kind of man who believes the buck stops with him.
That means someone on the team will almost certainly have to fall on their sword, and in classic Washington DC style, everyone seems eager to get their defence in early, and make the case for why someone else must go.
Susie Wiles seems to be the person the other senior staff are trying to offer up as a sacrifice. She may not be the best pick: the 69-year-old is a longtime political survivor, and this is not her first rodeo. But whether she survives in post or not, her ability to stop the dramatics of the Trump White House spilling out into public seems to be a thing of the past.
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