'Very troublesome': Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles speaks out on Musk feud – Spectrum News
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WASHINGTON — In a rare interview, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles spoke out about the rupture in the relationship between President Donald Trump and his onetime close ally Elon Musk, acknowledging the “troublesome” ending to their partnership while also speaking positively about the billionaire.
Sitting down for a podcast interview with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine, Wiles noted Musk’s time as a special government employee in the administration “certainly came to not a good ending” amid the public spat between the pair that outwardly started over Trump’s mega tax and spending bill.
Wiles appeared to agree with the sentiment expressed by Devine that Musk had a “sort of fatherly fixation” with the president that “inevitably was going to blow up.” At the same time, Wiles lamented multiple times that she didn’t understand why it ultimately did end on bad terms, although she quickly dismissed a question about whether Musk was jealous about not getting enough of Trump’s attention as something that “doesn’t sound like Elon.”
“I know that what has been said doesn’t ring accurate to me, but I don’t know,” Wiles said. “I enjoyed working with Elon, and I think he’s a fascinating person and sees the world differently. And I think that’s probably what the president saw, too.”
Even as Wiles noted the unfortunate ending, she had positive words for the onetime leader of Trump’s far-reaching government downsizing campaign, saying that along with being the world’s richest man, he “might be the world’s smartest man.”
She noted that Trump was “very, very kind to him” and the relationship was “a great thing” when it was going well.
“Elon had so much to offer us,” she said. “He knew things we didn’t know. He knew people and technologies that we didn’t know.”
Shortly after his departure as the unofficial leader of the U.S. DOGE Service, Musk took to his social media site, X, to blast the bill Trump considers key to his second-term agenda as Republicans in Congress at the time were working to get it over the finish line. The bill has now been passed and signed into law by Trump.
The criticism sparked a public feud between Musk and Trump that has now seen the president call the billionaire a “TRAIN WRECK” as Musk has been pledging to create a new political party and raging against the administration’s recent announcement about the Jeffrey Epstein case.
The wide-ranging interview touched on a number of topics, including Wiles’ career and advice for working women, the administration’s accomplishment in its first six months and the fact that the president had four people come in and out of her role in his first term.
Wiles said she doesn’t think much about the president’s first four years in the White House because she wasn’t there, but she said she believed the previous people in her job may have had “very little understanding of Donald Trump, the man.”
Wiles also lauded how officials in former Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration treated her during the process of Trump’s team transitioning into the White House, calling them “spectacular” and saying she still calls on them “from time to time.”
”They could not have been more kind to me as we were transitioning,” Wiles said. “Really wonderful – wonderful at telling us what to expect, what resources were at our fingertips. They were terrific.”
Wiles also specifically praised her counterpart in Biden’s White House, former chief of staff Jeff Zients, thanking him for “all he did to get me ready for this.”
