THURSDAY: Wiles says Trump was wrong about that!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2025

But first, the world's poorest children: Susie Wiles said many things in her eleven (11) interviews with Chris Whipple for Vanity Fair.

Given the number of deaths involved, her most significant rumination may involve the apparent "sociopath"—no, it's not a clinical term—known as Elon Musk. Here's the start of Whipple's text concerning this disaster:

The White House Chief of Staff on Trump’s Second Term (Part 1 of 2)

[...] 

From day one, Wiles had to grapple with another power center: Elon Musk.

“He is a complete solo actor,” said Wiles of Trump’s billionaire pal who led the scorched-earth blitz known as the Department of Government Efficiency. Wiles described Musk as something akin to a jacked-up Nosferatu. “The challenge with Elon is keeping up with him,” she told me. “He’s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the EOB in the daytime. And he’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person.”

Musk triggered the first true crisis of the Trump presidency and an early test for Wiles. Trump’s chief was shocked when the SpaceX founder eviscerated USAID, the United States Agency for International Development. “I was initially aghast,” Wiles told me. “Because I think anybody that pays attention to government and has ever paid attention to USAID believed, as I did, that they do very good work.”

In his executive order freezing foreign aid, Trump had decreed that lifesaving programs should be spared. Instead, they were shuttered. “When Elon said, ‘We’re doing this,’ he was already into it,” said Wiles. “And that’s probably because he knew it would be horrifying to others. But he decided that it was a better approach to shut it down, fire everybody, shut them out, and then go rebuild. Not the way I would do it.”

The passage about Musk's destruction of USAID continues at some length. Along the way, Whipple recalls what Bill Gates said about Musk's conduct:

In an interview with The Financial Times, Bill Gates remarked: “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.”

With that, we return to Wiles. As it turns out, shuttering USAID's lifesaving programs isn't the way Wiles says she would have done it! Also this, according to Wiles:

"I think anybody that pays attention to government and has ever paid attention to USAID believed, as I did, that they do very good work.”

Anyone who'd paid attention thought USAID did good work? 

It may be that Wiles believes that. But we'll guess that there are plenty of people within her orbit inside the White House who did know about the lives which were at stake, but thought the minimal expense involved in those lifesaving programs made the whole thing a perfect example of wasteful government work.

We were also struck by Wiles' remarks concerning Bill Clinton. Here's the account by NBC News of what Wiles said:

Top takeaways from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles' interviews with Vanity Fair

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Wiles said she has read what she calls "the Epstein file" and said while Trump is in it, he's "not doing anything awful." She said Trump and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were "young, single playboys together."

Wiles disputed Trump’s statements about former President Bill Clinton and Epstein, saying, "There is no evidence” that Clinton visited one of Epstein’s islands as many as 28 times, as Trump has claimed. She also said Trump's claim that there is anything incriminating about Clinton in the files was inaccurate.

"The president was wrong about that,” Wiles said.

"The president was wrong about that?" More on this topic tomorrow—but thanks for telling us now!