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Wiles Gives a Rare Long-Form Interview in Her West Wing Office: 'I Am the Chief of Staff — I'm Not the Chief of Donald Trump,' Jul. 9, 2025

July 9, 2025 · Pod Force One with Miranda Devine · 0:43:28

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What happened

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles received Miranda Devine in her West Wing office for the July 9, 2025 episode of Pod Force One, six months into the job. Asked what had stood out, she called the administration’s accomplishments “in totality… unfathomable,” listing foreign leaders and peace efforts, increased defense spending, what she described as a very strategic action on Iran, hoped-for peace in Gaza, and passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill. She explained the pace by preparation: after the way the 2020 election ended, the President “had four years to think about exactly what he wanted to do when he got back here and was ready to begin on the first day and has never stopped since.”

Her working rule for the job was the interview’s center. “I gave some piece of advice to myself when I started this job: I am the chief of staff. I’m not the chief of Donald Trump,” she said. “If I keep remembering that, then I know to facilitate what he needs and wants.” She described assembling the staff, running the administrative machinery, and pulling back on cabinet independence when it appears, so the President does not have to. Asked whether she had negotiated hostage releases, she corrected the premise: that was Steve Witkoff’s “amazing achievement,” she said — “I’m a cheerleader for it.”

Wiles recounted meeting Donald Trump at Trump Tower in 2015, when she concluded the Republican field needed “a disruptor,” and moving from the VIP section at Florida rallies to knocking on doors as his state co-chair. She described taking 11 years largely out of politics to raise her children and finding re-entry hard, and she discussed her father Pat Summerall — the merit-based household she grew up in, and the letter she wrote him as part of the family intervention that preceded his treatment at the Betty Ford Clinic and three decades of sobriety, as she told it. On Elon Musk, whose partnership with the President had just ended, she said it was “a great thing when it was a great thing” with “a very troublesome ending,” and that she did not know why it ended. On her falling-out with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, she said it is “in my rearview mirror” and “he’s a good governor.” On the July 2024 Butler assassination attempt, she said her belief that it was divine intervention is “100%,” recounting how the chart the President asked for came up early and on the opposite side, causing him to turn and lift his head.

Why it matters

Pod Force One is Wiles’s signature on-record statement of method: facilitator rather than gatekeeper, root-cause fixer of whatever angers the President, and enforcer of a pace she calls superhuman — delivered from the office itself, by the official who runs the building. Nearly everything else in her public record is a fragment; this is the whole account, in her own words, at the six-month mark.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the first-six-months accomplishment list as Wiles stated it on July 9, 2025 — including passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill and the hoped-for Gaza peace she named as still to come. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: Pod Force One with Miranda Devine, “Trump’s Right Hand: The Most Powerful Person Behind the Scenes” (Jul. 9, 2025, embedded above; interview as recorded in the Chief of Staff’s West Wing office). New York Post clip uploads of the same interview (the Musk and DeSantis excerpts) are recorded in the site index, not separately paged.