US President Donald Trump has come out in defence of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles after her interview with Vanity Fair suggested that she called out the MAGA leader for having an “alcoholic personality.” Both the top Trump aide and the 79-yer-old American leader have since broken their silence on the matter, dragging the entertainment news outlet.

Trump defends White House chief of staff Susie Wiles

In an interview with the New York Post, the US president said that he didn’t take an issue with what his subordinate said during the Vanity Fair interaction. Partly agreeing to what Wiles said, he told the Post, “No, she meant that I’m — you see, I don’t drink alcohol. So everybody knows that — but I’ve often said that if I did, I’d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic. I have said that many times about myself, I do. It’s a very possessive personality.”

Adding that he had full faith that Wiles would continue in her role, he added, “I’ve said that many times about myself. I’m fortunate I’m not a drinker. If I did, I could very well, because I’ve said that — what’s the word? Not possessive — possessive and addictive type personality. Oh, I’ve said it many times, many times before.”

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The American president has long attributed his driving influence behind abstaining from alcoholism to the 1981 death of his brother Fred at the age of 42. Fred Trump Jr passed away on September 26, 1981, at Queens Hospital Center after suffering a heart attack, which his family said was fuelled by alcoholism, as per the Washington Post.

In his reaction to Wiles’ candid interaction with the Vanity Fair, Trump went on to take a snipe at the outlet. He confessed to not actually having read the article but claimed he heard “the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.”

What White House official Susie Wiles said in the Vanity Fair interview

Shedding light on the inner workings of the White House, Wiles discussed not only Trump but Elon Musk, the Jeffrey Epstein files, JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi and many others in a series of interviews with Vanity Fair.

The most fiery admission from the lot revolved around the POTUS. Drawing parallels between the Republican leader and her late father, NFL legend Pat Summerall, she noted that Trump shared some personality traits which she viewed as associated with alcoholics.

“High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink,” she said during the interview chronicling the White House staff. “And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities,” adding Trump, “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do… Nothing, zero, nothing.”

Susie Wiles hits back at Vanity Fair

The White House chief of staff eventually took matters into her own hands, taking a jab at the news outlet for pushing a profile that seemingly portrayed her as taking up arms against Trump.

“The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history,” she wrote on X Tuesday (US time).

Claiming “significant context was disregarded,” she accused Vanity Fair of leaving out much of what she and others said about the Trump administration officials and the president himself.

“I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team,” she went on. “The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade.”

She concluded the defensive statement, adding, “None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!”

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About the Vanity Fair profile – More support for Susie Wiles

Notably, Vanity Fair recorded Wiles’ claims over the course of 11 interviews, with the report also suggesting that she acknowledged Trump was “not telling the truth when he “wrong” to accuse ex-President Bill Clinton of visiting convicted predator Epstein’s private island.

At the same time, she told the outlet that while Trump is name-dropped in the Epstein files, he’s not documented to have engaged in anything “awful.” Addressing the ties between the two men said to have been friends in the past, she said they were “young, single, playboys together.”

Further hitting out against Pam Bondi’s handling of the so-called and much-demanded-for records, Wiles told VF, the AG was “completely whiffed” by handing out “binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”

Part 1 of 2 of the interview series is titled “Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the “Junkyard Dogs”: The White House Chief of Staff on Trump’s Second Term.” Vanity Fair’s summary log-line reads: “Throughout the first year of Donald Trump’s second administration, Vanity Fair writer Chris Whipple has interviewed Wiles amid each moment of crisis. This insider’s account joins a portfolio of portraits for an unflinching, up-close look at power—and peril.”

Regardless, others have also spoken out in favour of Wiles, praising her as one of a kind Trump supporter. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hailed, “President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie. The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”

The POTUS’ son Donald Trump Jr also wrote on X: “I very rarely speak out about my father’s staffers, but there is no one on Earth more equipped to serve my father as Chief of Staff than Susie.”