President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that campaign co-chair Susie Wiles will be his White House chief of staff. With this appointment, Trump has placed Wiles — the first woman to hold the role — as the gatekeeper to the Oval Office, tasked with translating his policies into executive action.
Getting placed in this role is something of a cursed reward for Wiles’ loyalty throughout the campaign. It was her strategy that propelled Trump to a second term after four years out of office, and she survived at the top of his campaign in a way that few other operatives did over his previous two presidential races.
It seems highly unlikely, based on precedent, that the same will be said about her time in the White House.
Which isn’t to say that Wiles’ endurance so far isn’t impressive or that she’s incapable of handling the massive responsibilities that come with overseeing the White House’s operations. After all, Wiles and her campaign co-chair, Chris LaCivita, managed to impose discipline on what in the past seemed more like a reality show masquerading as a political campaign. It was only in the last months of the race that Trump broke off his leash — and yet Wiles still managed to keep him on track to a win. That counts for something.
We do have to remember that Trump blew through three (and a half) chiefs of staff during his four years in office.
Nor does Wiles seem to have any discernible hesitation about Trump’s revenge-driven agenda. If she encouraged him to stay on message on the trail instead of playing up his grievances, that’s not because she didn’t have her own ax to grind when she joined him. Wiles was expelled from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ inner circle in 2019 after being vital to his election and turned to Trump to carry out retribution. She got it in spades when Trump’s romp through the primaries involved obliterating DeSantis, who was once seen as the potential heir to the MAGA movement.
We do have to remember that Trump blew through three (and a half) chiefs of staff during his four years in office. The first, former Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus, lasted only six months in the job. He was utterly unable to handle the chaos that Trump actively encouraged in his first months in office as multiple nexuses of power struggled for control. That’s a game that Wiles doesn’t play (or didn’t during most of the race, at least). As one Trump campaign official told NBC News:
“She has commanded a ton of respect amongst the staff, as well as loyalty. She doesn’t play games. And she means what she says: On the campaign, she said we are checking egos at the door and held everyone to it,” said a campaign official, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly or because they were not authorized to speak on the record. “The team of rivals concept did not apply here.”
To replace Priebus, Trump moved John Kelly over to the White House from his position as secretary of homeland security. Of Trump’s consiglieres, the former general lasted the longest — a whopping 16 months on the job — and he successfully cracked down on the flow of junk information to Trump’s desk. But his attempts to tamp down his boss’ temper failed in the long run, and Kelly left his position at the end of 2018. (Since that time, Kelly has become one of the most vocal of Trump’s former staffers in calling out the danger he poses to American democracy.)
Trump then tapped Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to serve as “acting” chief of staff, a role he held for the better part of a year without ever fully “getting” the job. It was Mulvaney who guided the ship ahead of Trump’s first impeachment, stonewalling Congress about the shakedown of Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden. Mulvaney resigned from a sinecure administration position in the aftermath of Jan. 6 and has attempted a rehabilitation tour as a political commentator.
None of this history particularly bodes well for Wiles bringing the discipline that she attempted to impose on the campaign over to the White House with her
Former Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., was the last man standing, serving as chief of staff to the bitter end — and he was by far the most pliant of the bunch. While serving in Congress, Meadows positioned himself as a savvy political operative but more often found himself alienating and/or annoying everyone around him. He brought that same skill set to the White House, poorly attempting to cover up the seriousness of Trump’s Covid infection and immersing himself in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. He has since been indicted alongside Trump in Georgia and with other co-conspirators in the fake electors plot in Arizona (he has pleaded not guilty in both cases).
None of this history particularly bodes well for the proposition that Wiles can bring the discipline that she attempted to impose on the campaign over to the White House with her — at least not for very long. But she does have two things going for her.
The first is that she seems to be aware there are limits to how many times Trump can be told “no” before he turns against the messenger. There were times that the wheels nearly came off the Trump campaign after Biden dropped out in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, as Tim Alberta reported for The Atlantic. Accordingly, Wiles had to choose her battles over matters like Trump bringing chaotic former 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski back into the fold.
The second thing is that Wiles doesn’t appear to be the kind of person who wants to take the spotlight away from Trump. It’s something that Priebus called the secret to success of working in Trump’s shadow. (He should know: Priebus is one of the few ex-senior staffers still on good terms with Trump world, even helping organize the Republican National Convention this year.) This as evidenced by the fact that, when Trump was declaring victory early Wednesday and called Wiles to the mic, she demurred, whereas others would have leaped at the chance. It was LaCavita who said a few words instead.
Her penchant for discipline over chaos suggests that Wiles is more in the mold of Trump’s earlier chiefs than the later enablers. But Wiles stuck around through the closing months of the campaign by picking her battles carefully. Before too long, the real question she’s going to face in her new position at the seat of power in Washington is: What now counts as “vital”?
And should the earlier trend hold — of Trump choosing people with less and less fortitude to serve under him — we’ll see what happens if Wiles chooses the wrong place to draw the line. If she says “no” that one time too many, the odds are that she gets tossed for someone who can’t (or won’t) say no to the president’s worst instincts.
