Republican
presidential nominee former President Donald Trump brings Susie Wiles to the
podium at an election night watch party Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm
Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
WASHINGTON
(AP) — With her selection as President-elect Donald Trump 's incoming
White House chief of staff, veteran Florida political strategist
Susie Wiles moves from a largely behind-the-scenes role of campaign co-chair to
the high-profile position of the president's closest adviser and counsel.
She's been
in political circles for years. But who is Wiles, the operative set to be the
first woman to step into the powerful role of White House chief of staff?
She has
decades of experience, most of it in Florida
The daughter
of NFL player and sportscaster Pat Summerall, Wiles worked in the Washington
office of New York Rep. Jack Kemp in the 1970s. Following that were
stints on Ronald Reagan's campaign and in his White House as a scheduler.
Wiles then
headed to Florida, where she advised two Jacksonville mayors and worked for
Rep. Tillie Fowler. After that came statewide campaigns in rough and tumble
Florida politics, with Wiles being credited with helping businessman Rick Scott
win the governor's office.
After
briefly managing Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's 2012 presidential campaign,
she ran Trump's 2016 effort in Florida, when his win in the state helped him
clinch the White House.
She has a
history with Ron DeSantis
Two years
later, Wiles helped get Ron DeSantis elected as Florida's governor. But the two
would develop a rift that eventually led to DeSantis to urge Trump's 2020
campaign to cuts its ties with the strategist, when she was again running the
then-president's state campaign.
Wiles
ultimately went on to lead Trump’s primary campaign against DeSantis and
trounced the Florida governor. Trump campaign aides and their outside allies
gleefully taunted DeSantis throughout the race — mocking his laugh, the way he
ate and accusing him of wearing lifts in his boots — as well as using insider
knowledge that many suspected had come from Wiles and others on Trump’s
campaign staff who had also worked for DeSantis and had had bad experiences.
Wiles had
posted just three times on X this year at the time of her announcement. Shortly
before DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race in January, Wiles made a
rare appearance on social media. She responded to a message that DeSantis had
cleared his campaign website of upcoming events with a short but clear message:
“Bye, bye.”
She shuns
the spotlight — most of the time
Joining up
with Trump's third campaign in its nascent days, Wiles is one of the few top
officials to survive an entire Trump campaign and was part of the team that put
together a far more professional operation for his third White House bid — even
if the former president routinely broke through those guardrails anyway.
She largely
avoided the spotlight, even refusing to take the mic to speak as Trump
celebrated his victory early Wednesday morning.
But she
showed she was not above taking on tasks reserved for volunteers. At one of
Trump’s appearances in Iowa in July of last year, as the former
president posed for pictures with a long line of voters, Wiles grabbed a
clipboard and started approaching people waiting to get them to fill out cards
committing to caucus for Trump in the leadoff primary contest.
“If we leave
the conference room after a meeting and somebody leaves trash on the table,
Susie’s the person to grab the trash and put it in the trash can,” said Chris
LaCivita, who served as campaign co-chair along with Wiles.
Another of
her three posts on X this year was in the closing days of the campaign,
clapping back after billionaire Mark Cuban remarked that Trump didn’t have
“strong, intelligent women” in his orbit. After Wiles’ selection as White House
chief of staff, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Trump backer, quipped on X that
the president-elect had chosen a “strong, intelligent woman” as his chief of
staff.
She can
control some of Trump's worst impulses
Wiles was
able to help control Trump’s worst impulses — not by chiding him or lecturing,
but by earning his respect and showing him that he was better off when he
followed her advice than flouted it. At one point late in the campaign, when
Trump gave a widely criticized speech in Pennsylvania in which he
strayed from his talking points and suggested he wouldn't mind the media being
shot, Wiles came out to stare at him silently.
Trump often
referenced Wiles on the campaign trail, publicly praising her leadership of
what he said he was often told was his “best-run campaign.”
“She’s
incredible. Incredible,” he said at a Milwaukee rally earlier this month.
Will she
have staying power?
In his first
administration, Trump went through four chiefs of staff — including one who
served in an acting capacity for a year — in a period of record-setting
personnel churn.
A chief of
staff serves as the president’s confidant, helping to execute an agenda and
balancing competing political and policy priorities. They also tend to serve as
a gatekeeper, helping determine whom the president spends their time and to
whom they speak — an effort under which Trump chafed inside the White House.
Trump has
repeatedly said he believes the biggest mistake of his first term was hiring
the wrong people. He was new to Washington then, he has said, and didn’t know
any better.
But now, Trump says, he knows the “best people” and those to avoid for jobs.
Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price and Zeke Miller in Washington and Jill Colvin in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this report.
Meg Kinnard
can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP
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2024 The Associated Press.
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