The President-elect of the United States, Donald Trumpannounced that Susie Wilesshadow director of his campaign, will be his chief of staff at the White House for her second term, which will begin on January 20, 2025. Wiles will be the first woman to occupy one of the most important positions in the American administration, responsible for coordinating the members of the presidential cabinet.
yours is the first appointment announced by Trump since he beat the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harrisduring last Tuesday’s elections. “Susie Wiles helped me achieve one of the biggest political victories in American history and was an integral part of my successful 2016 and 2020 campaigns,” Trump said in a statement, in which he described Wiles as a “strong, intelligent, innovative, and universally admired and respected” woman.
“It is a well-deserved honor to have Susie as first female chief of staff in American history. “I have no doubt he will make our country proud,” he said. On election night, when Trump gave his first victory speech, the future president publicly thanked Wiles for his work during the election. period.
Who is Susie Wiles?
At 67, Susan Summerall Wiles has been weaving for more than four decades in the shadows the thread from which some of the greatest recent successes of the Republican Partybut so far he has maintained a anonymous strategist profile this changes radically with this appointment.
Present in a few institutional photos, with only several tens of thousands of followers on his social networks to date, soft-spoken and defining himself as “moderate”, Wiles He has managed campaigns for presidents, mayors, governors and members of Congress. with many more victories than defeats. Much of Trump’s success in 2016 and this year, as well as the future of politicians like Rick Scott or Ron DeSantis, are the product of his ability to navigate lobby groups, lawyers or journalists.
A veteran of Florida politics, Wiles was raised and educated in New Jersey. Today, according to analysts, managed to keep Trump’s image afloat even after his defeat in 2020, the assault on the Capitol and his various legal setbacks.
The daughter of a famous American footballer and raised in a house with three brothers and herself as an only child, she witnessed how her mother, Katharine Jacobs, fought with her father, the famous American footballer. Pat Sumerallso that he could overcome his alcoholism problems. However, the New York Giants player could not give up his addictions and led a parallel life with a lover for 17 years.
But this absence and lack of paternal reference, far from sinking Wiles, strengthened his charisma and his ability to face problems: “Like all children, we are in some way the product of the way we were raised, sometimes good and sometimes bad,” he admitted. in an interview with ‘Politico’ that same year.
At the age of 22, she was hired as an assistant to Jack Kemp, her father’s former Giants teammate and Republican congressman from New York, and a year later, in 1980, she joined the team. . Ronald Reagan for his presidential campaign. Since the 1990s, her political career has spanned Florida, where she was appointed district director for Congresswoman Tillie Fowler after marrying Lanny Wiles, Reagan’s right-hand man, with whom she had two daughters. and ended up getting divorced in 2017.
She also served as Director of Communications and Intergovernmental Affairs for former Jacksonville Mayors John Delaney and John Peyton during a long career at the State of Florida where, among other accomplishments, she also managed to lift Ron DeSantis to win the 2018 gubernatorial elections.
His predecessor, Rick Scott, senator since 2019, based – like Trump – part of his political success on the advice of Susie Wiles. So much so that when asked why he didn’t meet with the state press editorial boards during his gubernatorial campaign, he responded: “I’ll have to ask Susie.”.
