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** OPINION
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** Why a rare Susie Wiles interview became media catnip — and shook up the Trump White House
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White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, shown here last month in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

This might go down as 2025’s interview of the year.

Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple talked with a key figure in the Trump White House who rarely speaks publicly: chief of staff Susie Wiles. Here’s Part 1 ([link removed]) and Part 2 ([link removed]) of that interview.

Access to Wiles is so rare that other news outlets wrote about the interview.

They also wrote about it because Wiles didn’t hold back. Unlike many who are in President Donald Trump’s orbit, Wiles wasn’t afraid to spill the tea.

She had some negative — or at the very least, brutally honest — things to say about Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Elon Musk and even Trump himself.

Mediaite’s Isaac Schorr wrote ([link removed]) that “the political world marveled that Wiles would open up in such a manner.”

Perhaps Wiles marveled at how much she opened up, or was taken aback by the reaction to the interview, because she issued a statement after Vanity Fair published its piece.

In the statement ([link removed]) , Wiles said, “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. 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. 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. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!”

So what exactly were some of the things Wiles said?

Let’s start with something many of us already know, but are nonetheless disappointed to hear on the record — that Trump is using his presidency as payback.

The New York Times’ Peter Baker explained ([link removed]) , “President Trump’s chief of staff said she tried to get him to end his ‘score settling’ against political enemies after 90 days in office, but acknowledged that the administration’s still ongoing push for prosecutions has been fueled in part by the president’s desire for retribution.”

Whipple sat down with Willes 11 times for interviews that Baker described as “extraordinarily unguarded,” adding, “Not only did she confirm that Mr. Trump is using criminal prosecution to retaliate against adversaries, she also acknowledged that he was not telling the truth when he accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the private island of the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.”

In addition, Wiles described Trump as having an “alcoholic's personality,” that Vance has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and that Musk is “an avowed ketamine” user. Wiles also said that Bondi “completely whiffed” on how she has handled the Epstein files.

Circling back to the idea that Trump is using his presidency to seek revenge on his enemies, Willis told the Times, “It’s not that he thinks they wronged him, although they did. He thinks that they wronged, and they should not be able to do to somebody else what they did to him and the way that you could cure that, at least potentially, is to expose what was done.”

Willis, however, said that she wanted Trump to quickly move on from going after those he feels have wronged him, adding, “You don’t want it to get in the way of the real agenda. And so, loosely, let’s get it all going within 90 days. Which we did. Now, the justice system works slowly and so even if it was initiated in 90 days, it could be a long time before it’s done.”

Then came the reaction to Wiles' interview.

Former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci wrote in a tweet ([link removed]) , “The Trump era is ending. When top advisors feel emboldened to speak so candidly, something’s up. And I think the reaction to Rob Reiner, by all accounts a decent person with a troubled child from both the right and left is more than a surface crack.”

While some joked that Wiles’ comments were akin to an “exit interview,” it would appear Trump is standing behind her. He told The New York Post ([link removed]) , “I didn’t read it, but I don’t read Vanity Fair — but she’s done a fantastic job. I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.”

Then, in what clearly was a coordinated effort, many members of Trump’s cabinet, as well as Vance, FBI director Kash Patel and press secretary Karoline Leavitt, put out similar statements talking about how great Wiles is while criticizing the “left” for the Vanity Fair story. Patel, for example, wrote ([link removed]) , “Fake news comes after you when you’re effective… and there’s nobody in @realDonaldTrump’s team more effective than @SusieWiles.”

The responses coming out of the Trump administration were eerily similar and, to be honest, extremely weird.

Mediaite’s Colby Hall wrote ([link removed]) , “The intended audience, however, was not for nattering nabobs or even Trump supporters — it was internal. In Trump World, loyalty is demonstrated publicly and on cue. The cost of silence is higher than the cost of amplifying a message you may not fully endorse. When a central figure like Wiles comes under fire, allies are expected to choose a side quickly and in public.”

Hall noted that the responses were almost simultaneous and “emphasized unity, effectiveness, and devotion.” In addition, no one actually disputed what Wiles said in Vanity Fair.

Hall wrote, “That omission matters. Denying the quotes would have triggered a factual fight the White House could not easily control. Casting the article as a smear allowed defenders to avoid the substance entirely. The issue was exposure.”

Hall added, “The Vanity Fair profile was damaging. The response was more revealing. In Trump’s White House, loyalty is measured by how fast you defend what you may not believe.”

In the end, does anyone actually believe that Vanity Fair would do 11 interviews with Wiles and then make up a bunch of quotes?

CNN media writer Brian Stelter tweeted ([link removed]) , “I wrote for @VanityFair for a couple years. The fact-checking process is INTENSE. Editors and fact-checkers probe your sourcing, your framing, your quotes. Thus Susie Wiles knew this story was coming and knew the quotes were legit. She can object to ‘context’ but not quotes.”

Whipple appeared on CNN ([link removed]) on Tuesday night and told Anderson Cooper that he recorded every interview and that “everything was scrupulously in context.”

If you don’t want to actually go through the entire two parts of the Vanity Fair interview with Wiles, check out Mediaite’s David Gilmour with “10 Wildest Revelations From Vanity Fair’s Earth-Shattering Susie Wiles Story.” ([link removed])

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** Big news with Warner Bros. Discovery
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The Wall Street Journal’s Lauren Thomas and Joe Flint reported ([link removed]) Tuesday that Warner Bros. Discovery will tell its shareholders to reject Paramount’s bid to buy it and recommend that the company be sold to Netflix, as originally planned.

Earlier this month, Netflix agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — including its film and TV studios, its gaming business, HBO Max and HBO — in a deal worth $83 billion. But, soon after, Paramount announced a hostile takeover bid, offering to pay $30 per share in cash, valuing Warner Bros. Discovery at just more than $108 billion, including debt.

Complicating matters are regulatory issues that will need to be approved by the Trump administration. There is some belief that Trump would prefer Paramount and CEO David Ellison to end up with WBD. Paramount said its offer is “backstopped” by the Ellison family. However, Paramount’s bid includes billions of dollars in funding from other backers, including sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. It also includes money from Affinity Partners, the investment firm founded by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. However, Axios’ Sara Fischer reported ([link removed]) that Kushner’s firm has backed out of the deal.

In addition, Paramount’s bid also includes WBD’s cable networks, including CNN. Ellison has reportedly indicated to Trump that he would make changes to CNN — something Trump would very much like.

While WBD is planning to tell shareholders to reject Paramount’s bid, it could result in Paramount sweetening its offer.

Thomas and Flint reported, “Both Netflix and Paramount have been meeting with big Warner investors to make their cases. Some Warner investors have told the Journal they would be ready to tender their shares in the Paramount deal if the offer is sweetened.”


** Trump sues the BBC
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As he promised, Trump is suing the BBC for up to $10 billion over its editing of the speech he gave before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In a documentary that ran on the BBC in October 2024 — just before the presidential election — parts of Trump’s speech were edited together to make it look like one continuous comment. During his speech, Trump told the crowd, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

But in the edit for the documentary, Trump said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

The two sections that were stitched together were actually 50 minutes apart.

After a whistleblower report about the edit was published in Britain’s The Telegraph last month, BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness announced their resignations. As soon as that happened, Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue, and Trump demanded an apology. The BBC apologized, but refused to compensate Trump in any way.

So this week, he filed suit in Miami, telling reporters, “I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth — literally to put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something. So we’ll be bringing that lawsuit. A lot of people are asking, ‘When are you bringing that lawsuit?’ Even the media can’t believe that one day they actually put terrible words in my mouth.”

What are the chances Trump would prevail? It seems unlikely because he will have a hard time proving he was actually damaged. For starters, the documentary didn’t even air in the United States and, secondly, Trump won the election. Plus, there are a bunch of other hurdles.

In a statement, the BBC said, “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case.”

For more, check out Scott Nover’s piece ([link removed]) in The Washington Post.


** More Rob Reiner coverage
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Flowers and candles are placed on the Walk of Fame star for Rob Reiner on Tuesday in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

The entertainment world is still in shock over the homicide deaths of director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. The Reiners’ 32-year-old son, Nick, who has struggled with substance abuse, will be charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

Here’s some more notable coverage of this story:
* The Los Angeles Times’ Hailey Branson-Potts, Clara Harter and Richard Winton with “A famous father, a troubled son: How addiction tormented the Reiner family.” ([link removed])
* Also in the LA Times, Richard Winton and Clara Harter wrote, “Rob Reiner’s final weekend: Conan O’Brien’s party, the Obamas, unthinkable violence, a frantic manhunt.” ([link removed]) Winton and Harter report that the Reiners went to O’Brien’s holiday party Saturday night and were supposed to meet Barack and Michelle Obama on Sunday night. But that meeting never happened because the Reiners were found dead in their Brentwood, California, home on Sunday afternoon. This story tries to piece together the weekend.
* Los Angeles Times television critic Robert Lloyd wrote an appreciation for Reiner: “Rob Reiner’s humanity was a signature of his TV work, in front of and behind the camera.” ([link removed])
* New York Times chief film critic Manohla Dargis with “Rob Reiner Gave Us Great Reasons to Go to the Movies.” ([link removed]) Dargis wrote, “Reiner’s gifts as a filmmaker were performance-based and steeped in comedy; he wasn’t an auteurist icon like Martin Scorsese, one of the inspirations for the filmmaker character whom Reiner played in “This Is Spinal Tap.” Rather, Reiner made his mark in the stories he told. In their variety, generosity and in their open, unembarrassed appeal to the audience, his movies recalled an earlier era when studio directors raced from set to set, from one story to the next, making some of the solid and, at times, soaring films that defined Old Hollywood.”
* Reiner adapted two Stephen King stories into movies: “Stand by Me” and “Misery.” King wrote a guest essay for The New York Times: “Why I Hugged Rob Reiner After Watching ‘Stand by Me.’” ([link removed])
* NBC late-night host Seth Meyers paid tribute to Reiner ([link removed]) and also took the opportunity to calmly, yet sternly condemn the insensitive comments made by Trump about Reiner. Meyers told viewers, “I feared this was something he was going to do. But it was even worse than I could have imagined. The president made it about himself, because he’s incapable of making it about anything else.”
* ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel also criticized Trump’s comments, saying, “What we need in a time like this, besides common sense when it comes to guns and mental health care, is compassion and leadership. We did not get that from our president, because he has none of it to give. Instead, we got a fool rambling about nonsense. Just when you think he can’t go any lower, he somehow finds a way to do that.”


** Where was the focus?
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Over the past weekend, CBS News tried something a little different. New editor-in-chief Bari Weiss interviewed Erika Kirk, the widow of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, in a town hall that aired in prime time on Saturday.

But just as the town hall was about to air, another major story broke: There was an active shooter on the campus of Brown University. Two students were killed and another nine were injured.

The New Republic’s Edith Olmsted had this interesting observation ([link removed]) : “Over the course of Saturday evening, CBS News’s X account posted 12 times about its town hall with Kirk, but only posted four updates about the deadly shooting in Rhode Island that killed two students and injured eight others. By Sunday morning, there was a tab at the top of CBS News’s website providing readers with a quick way to access crucial information about the shooting at Brown University—but right in front of it was another tab leading them to more content from Kirk’s town hall.”

Then came the mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia during a Jewish celebration that killed 15 and injured at least 42 others.

Olmsted went on to note, “While the CBS News account posted on X 12 times about the shooting at Bondi Beach, it also continued to post about Kirk’s town hall six more times: the same number of times it provided updates on the investigation into the shooting at Brown University. So, over the course of the weekend, CBS News managed to publish a whopping 18 posts about Kirk, 12 posts about the Bondi Beach shooting, and only 10 posts about Brown University.”

OK, so we probably shouldn’t read too much into one news-packed weekend. But all eyes are now on CBS News with Weiss now in charge.

Olmsted wrote, “In her first memo to CBS News employees when she took over in October, Weiss had proclaimed that she planned to report ‘on the world as it actually is.’ But it seems that her rather boring tendency to gravitate toward right-wing commentators to help us understand our world will always come first.”


** The ratings …
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What about the viewership for the Weiss town hall with Kirk? Not great. According to Nielsen, the special drew 1.9 million viewers. Now, as I’ve written, Saturday at 8 p.m. is not a great time for television. Then again, the viewership was an 11% decline for the year-to-date average for that hour.

The Independent’s Justin Baragona wrote ([link removed]) , “A network source, however, noted that season-to-date the town hall was actually up compared to the network’s programming in recent weeks, showing an increase of 16 percent in total viewers and 10 percent in the key (25 to 54) demo based on Nielsen’s preliminary numbers. The source also pointed out that the Weiss-Kirk event was up in both metrics compared to last week’s programming. … In a press release on Tuesday afternoon, CBS said that the town hall broadcast outpaced the network’s season-to-date performance in the time slot by 32 percent in total viewership and 19 percent in the key demo.”


** Media tidbits
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* President Donald Trump is scheduled to give a national address at 9 p.m. Eastern tonight. It sounds like it’s just going to be Trump bragging about what he believes are his accomplishments in 2025 and what’s in store for the future.
* FCC chair Brendan Carr will testify today before Congress, where he is expected to face some pushback for how he is handling his post. Status’ Oliver Darcy has more ([link removed]) .
* Radio legend Howard Stern has signed on for three more years at SiriusXM, where he has been since 2006. He says he has worked out a more flexible schedule. His co-host, Robin Quivers, is also staying on. Stern, 71, told listeners Tuesday, “If Robin wasn’t up for it, then I wasn’t going to do it.” The Associated Press has the details ([link removed]) .
* The Washington Post’s Will Oremus and Tatum Hunter write about Candace Owens in “She was MAGA’s favorite conspiracist. Then she dug into Charlie Kirk’s killing.” ([link removed])
* The Associated Press’ Byron Tau with “How an AM radio station in California weathered the Trump administration’s assault on media.” ([link removed])
* Roxanna Scott, the former head of the USA Today sports department, has joined ESPN in the newly created position of senior vice president, editor in chief. Here’s more ([link removed]) from ESPN.
* I love, love, love this story for Poynter from Pete Croatto about legendary NBA insider Peter Vescey, who did must-consume work for The New York Post and NBC: “Why Peter Vecsey is spending the fourth quarter on the bench.” ([link removed])


** Hot type
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* NBC News’ Dan Slepian and Erik Ortiz with “A medical examiner's testimony put a father behind bars for life. Now he says he ‘made a mistake.’” ([link removed])
* The Ringer’s Katie Baker with “The Year ‘6 7’ Ate Parents’ Minds.” ([link removed])


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Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .

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