As I am not a subscriber, I haven’t been able to read this week’s anti-Trump article in Vanity Fair, which stems from a series of about 12 interviews with Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Therefore, I am left with what other publications deem necessary to deduce from the series.
So far, everything I’ve read in my research seems to point to evidence of a journalistic “mind virus” (thank you, Erika Kirk) by the interviewer and writer Chris Whipple.
The two-part series refers to the Trump team as “junkyard dogs” and is subtitled “Eye of the Hurricane,” which gives you a pretty good idea of the author’s intent vis-à-vis Donald Trump and his administration.
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Perhaps the most quoted line from the article concerns President Trump and his driven personality, in which Wiles observes: “He has the personality of an alcoholic and acts in a way that he believes there is nothing he can’t do.”
She adds: “High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. So I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.” (Susie Wiles’s father, Pat Summerall — a professional football player and then sportscaster — was an alcoholic.)
Trump, of course, famously eschews alcohol, and responded when hearing of Wiles’s quotation: “Everyone knows this. I have said several times that ‘if I had drunk, I would very likely have become an alcoholic’.”
Trump, who says he has not read the article, stood by his chief of staff, who herself took to social media to claim her remarks were all taken out of context in the lengthy interview process, noting:
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”
Also in the article, Wiles is quoted as slamming Elon Musk as a ketamine freak and observing: “He’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are.” She also is quoted as seeing Vice-President JD Vance as a “conspiracy theorist.”
When asked if Trump were out to get his enemies, Wiles says: “I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”
Writer Whipple definitely “went for it” in his portrayal of Trump and his people, who are, after all, nothing but “junkyard dogs.”
