Susie Wiles profile: ‘tough, smart’ operator who led Trump back to White House
Susie Wiles, who was named Donald Trump’s new White House chief of staff, will be the first woman in US history to serve in the role as gatekeeper to the president, a position that typically wields great influence.
The chief of staff position is usually the first appointee that a president-elect names, and may oversee the transition from one administration. Once Trump is sworn in as president, Wiles will also be in charge of all White House policy, serving as a confidante and adviser and managing day-to-day affairs.
Wiles, 67, is a veteran of Florida politics. She began her career in the Washington office of New York congressman Jack Kemp in the 1970s. Following that she did stints on Ronald Reagan’s campaign and in his White House as a scheduler.
Wiles then headed to Florida, where she advised two Jacksonville mayors and worked for Congresswoman Tillie Fowler. After that came statewide campaigns in rough-and-tumble Florida politics, with Wiles being credited with helping businessman Rick Scott win the governor’s office.
After briefly managing the Utah governor Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign, she ran Trump’s 2016 effort in Florida, when his win in the state helped him clinch the White House.
Two years later, Wiles helped get Ron DeSantis elected as Florida’s governor. But the two would develop a rift that eventually led to DeSantis to urge Trump’s 2020 campaign to cuts its ties with the strategist, when she was again running the then-president’s state campaign.
Wiles ultimately went on to lead Trump’s primary campaign against DeSantis and trounced the Florida governor. Trump campaign aides and their outside allies gleefully taunted DeSantis throughout the race – mocking his laugh, the way he ate and accusing him of wearing lifts in his boots – as well as using insider knowledge that many suspected had come from Wiles and others on Trump’s campaign staff who had also worked for DeSantis and had had bad experiences.
Wiles joined up with Trump’s third campaign and served as his “de facto chief of staff” over the last three years to lead his successful re-election bid and helped him work with lawyers on his various criminal and civil cases.
Key events
We’ve been reporting on the possible impact of Trump’s election victory on the war in Ukraine.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has suggested Trump will pull support for Kyiv, but Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris believes the US stance should have little impact on any EU decision.
He said:
The US had its election and it made its decision but that doesn’t change European values, and European values around the importance of the UN Charter, the importance of territorial integrity remain.
I think when it comes to the Middle East, I think we’re at a very very dangerous moment and I worry about this interregnum period now and how Netanyahu responds to that.
President-elect Trump is a person who professes his support for peace. I think it is so important now that the world speaks with one voice in terms of calling out the humanitarian crisis and the loss of civilian life.
I know President-elect Trump references the Abraham Accords as a moment of success in his last term in office.
Is that a pathway back towards getting partners in the region around a table to discuss regional stability, but part of that has to be the recognition that Palestine is a state in its own right?
Nadia Khomami
Artists need to “keep the flag of truth flying” after Donald Trump’s election victory, the legendary Scottish actor Brian Cox has said.
Cox, who played Logan Roy in the hit HBO series Succession, also said the world has “never been in a more dangerous place than it is at the moment” as he reflected on the US election campaign and a second impending Trump presidency.
“As artists we have to bang the drum, we have to keep going,” he said in an interview with the Guardian. “We mustn’t put up with it. That’s why I admire people like Mark Ruffalo [a longtime advocate for social justice].
“I’m not going to give up on my criticism of Trump. I think it behoves artists to not give up, to keep the flag of truth flying, because it’s been so abused in recent years.”
Cox went viral on Tuesday night after making his disdain for Trump known during a virtual appearance on Channel 4 alongside the former UK prime minister Boris Johnson.
The 78-year-old, who splits his time between London and New York, said he was “acutely depressed” about the election and felt like he just had to “ride it out”.
Cox said:
There’s probably nobody more surprised than Trump himself. I think he was expecting to talk about voter fraud. But the American people have bought into him, which I find absolutely astonishing.
It’s extraordinary that he has so many Catholic voters. I’m not religious at all, but I was born a Catholic. So I know about the Catholic doctrine and Trump’s sins are unbelievable. How can they possibly rationalise their faith in relationship to him?
He added:
I’ve got two sons in America, I worry about what’s in store for them. The only person Trump cares about is himself. It’s hard to predict what he’ll be like.
The Associated Press reports that a federal judge has struck down a Biden administration policy that aimed to ease a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who are married to US citizens.
The program, lauded as one of the biggest presidential actions to help immigrant families in years, allowed undocumented spouses and stepchildren of US citizens to apply for a green card without first having to leave the country.
The temporary relief from deportation brought a brief sense of security to some 500,000 immigrants estimated to benefit from the program before Texas-based US district judge put it on hold in August, days after applicants filed their paperwork.
Barker ruled that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority by implementing the program and had stretched the legal interpretation of relevant immigration law “past its breaking point”.
The short-lived Biden administration initiative known as “Keeping Families Together” would have been unlikely to remain in place after Donald Trump took office in January. But its early termination creates greater uncertainty for immigrant families as many are bracing for Trump’s return to the White House.
Demonstrators in South Korea swore off heterosexual dating in protest against misogyny. Now the movement is sparking interest among young American women.
So what exactly is the 4B movement going viral after Trump’s win?
My colleague Alaina Demopoulos has this report:
Susie Wiles profile: ‘tough, smart’ operator who led Trump back to White House
Susie Wiles, who was named Donald Trump’s new White House chief of staff, will be the first woman in US history to serve in the role as gatekeeper to the president, a position that typically wields great influence.
The chief of staff position is usually the first appointee that a president-elect names, and may oversee the transition from one administration. Once Trump is sworn in as president, Wiles will also be in charge of all White House policy, serving as a confidante and adviser and managing day-to-day affairs.
Wiles, 67, is a veteran of Florida politics. She began her career in the Washington office of New York congressman Jack Kemp in the 1970s. Following that she did stints on Ronald Reagan’s campaign and in his White House as a scheduler.
Wiles then headed to Florida, where she advised two Jacksonville mayors and worked for Congresswoman Tillie Fowler. After that came statewide campaigns in rough-and-tumble Florida politics, with Wiles being credited with helping businessman Rick Scott win the governor’s office.
After briefly managing the Utah governor Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign, she ran Trump’s 2016 effort in Florida, when his win in the state helped him clinch the White House.
Two years later, Wiles helped get Ron DeSantis elected as Florida’s governor. But the two would develop a rift that eventually led to DeSantis to urge Trump’s 2020 campaign to cuts its ties with the strategist, when she was again running the then-president’s state campaign.
Wiles ultimately went on to lead Trump’s primary campaign against DeSantis and trounced the Florida governor. Trump campaign aides and their outside allies gleefully taunted DeSantis throughout the race – mocking his laugh, the way he ate and accusing him of wearing lifts in his boots – as well as using insider knowledge that many suspected had come from Wiles and others on Trump’s campaign staff who had also worked for DeSantis and had had bad experiences.
Wiles joined up with Trump’s third campaign and served as his “de facto chief of staff” over the last three years to lead his successful re-election bid and helped him work with lawyers on his various criminal and civil cases.
Project 2025 chief’s book urges ‘burning’ of FBI, New York Times and Boy Scouts
Martin Pengelly
A new book by the chief architect of Project 2025, a hugely controversial policy plan for a second Trump term, repeatedly employs imagery of fire and burning, including calling for rightwingers to “burn away the rot” of American institutions and organizations deemed opposed to conservative aims.
The news comes after a White House address on Thursday, two days after Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in the US presidential election, when Joe Biden called on Americans to “bring down the temperature” after months of heated political battle.
Mixing classical quotes with cliché (“it is time to fight fire with fire”) and metaphors about forest fires and Smokey Bear, Kevin Roberts, president of the far-right Heritage Foundation, advocates “a long, controlled burn” of targets including the FBI, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the New York Times, “every Ivy League college” and even the Boy Scouts of America.
Meanwhile, Hungary’s prime minister believes Ukraine has already lost in its fight against Russia’s invasion and is predicting that Donald Trump’s new administration will abandon US support for Kyiv, Reuters reports.
Viktor Orbán told state radio:
If Donald Trump had won in 2020 in the United States, these two nightmarish years wouldn’t have happened, there wouldn’t have been a war. The situation on the front is obvious, there’s been a military defeat. The Americans are going to pull out of this war.
Orbán has long sought to undermine EU support for Kyiv, and routinely blocked, delayed or watered down the bloc’s efforts to provide weapons and funding and to sanction Moscow for its invasion.
Vladimir Putin is ready to discuss Ukraine with Donald Trump – but that does not mean Putin is willing to alter his demands and Russia’s goals in Ukraine remain unchanged, the Kremlin said on Friday.
On Thursday, Putin congratulated Trump on winning the election, praised him for showing courage when a gunman tried to assassinate him, and said Moscow was ready for dialogue with the Republican president-elect.
Asked about a possible phone call between Trump and Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was nothing concrete on it to report yet, and said it would be premature to talk of any improvement in Russia-US ties.
But Putin had made it clear many times he remained open for dialogue, he said.
Voters have elected a Republican majority in the Senate. They have also been electing members of the House of Representatives and state governors. You can see a full map of the results across the US here:
Swing state analysis: how Democratic vote stayed flat while Republican gains won it for Trump
Ashley Kirk
Guardian analysis suggests Harris underperformed compared with 2020 – but in the states that mattered most it was Trump’s gains that won him the White House
Nationwide, the US election was primarily a story of Democratic underperformance rather than huge Republican gains compared to 2020 – but in the swing states that ultimately decided the victor, it was the opposite story, with Trump’s gains far outstripping Harris’s losses.
Across the US, Democrats lost more total votes overall compared with 2020 than Republicans gained: Harris attracted 1.4m fewer votes than her Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, did, while Trump attracted 1.1m more than he did in the previous election.
The figures were calculated by looking only at counties that have 100% of their precincts reporting and at least 95% of their estimated ballots counted, and comparing the vote in those areas to 2020.
Another way of looking at the numbers is that for every 78 votes Donald Trump gained nationally compared to 2020, Kamala Harris lost 100.
But in the seven swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – there was an inverse trend: the Democratic vote dropped very slightly but held up quite well compared to 2020, but Trump made enough gains to give him the White House. A large part of Democratic campaign spending was focused on the swing states, suggesting that this helped buoy up Democratic support – but not enough to overcome a wave of additional Trump voters.
At least 24 states also saw a larger drop in Democratic votes than any movement in Republican votes compared with 2020 (looking only at areas where counting was almost complete).
Read on here:
Jamie Grierson
The UK’s deputy prime minister, meanwhile, revealed she had spoken to the vice-president elect, JD Vance, posting on X that it had been “good to speak” to the Ohio senator.
Like her colleague David Lammy, Angela Rayner has a record of making critical marks of Trump, previously calling him an “absolute buffoon” over his handling of the Covid crisis.
Good to speak to US Vice President-elect @JDVance as UK Deputy Prime Minister.
We spoke about our plans for the future and how, working together, we build on the special relationship between our great countries.
— Angela Rayner (@AngelaRayner) November 7, 2024
She had told ITV: “He has no place in the White House. He’s an embarrassment and he should be ashamed of himself, especially when thousands of Americans have died.”
After he lost the election in 2020, she said she was “so happy to see the back of Donald Trump”.
The awkward comments go both ways, however. In July, Vance said the UK would be an “Islamist country” under the new Labour government.
“I have to beat up on the UK – just one additional thing,” Vance said. “I was talking with a friend recently and we were talking about, you know, one of the big dangers in the world, of course, is nuclear proliferation, though, of course, the Biden administration doesn’t care about it.
“And I was talking about, you know, what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it’s Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK, since Labour just took over.”
In response at the time, Rayner said Vance had said “quite a lot of fruity things in the past” and she does not “recognise” his view of the UK.
UK foreign secretary says his Trump criticism is ‘old news’
Jamie Grierson
The British foreign secretary, David Lammy, has described his previous remarks about the US president-elect, Donald Trump, as “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic” and a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” as old news.
Keir Starmer’s government is making efforts to smooth over tensions with the incoming president, whose pledge to raise tariffs on imports into the US could hit the UK economy.
Appearing on BBC Newscast, Lammy was pressed on his past critical comments but dismissed them, adding it would be a “struggle to find any politician” who had not said some “pretty ripe things” about Trump.
Asked if he apologised for remarks including calling the president-elect a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” or if Trump brought them up when they met in New York in September, Lammy said “not even vaguely”.