BURSTWhite House chief of staff Susie Wiles says in a new Fox News interview that President Trump is a very different – and, in her opinion, better – leader than he was when he took office eight years ago, but she’s not taking credit for it.
"He's been through so much: the lawfare, having been the leader of the free world, having had an assassination attempt. He's a different person than he was," Wiles told the president’s daughter-in-law and Fox News personality Lara Trump in an interview that will air this weekend. “I think life experience and who he is changed him.”
"I think he's a better leader now," she continued. "I don't know that I had anything to do with that, but I think the country benefits from it."
The network on Thursday released an excerpt from the interview, which will be featured in an episode of "My View with Lara Trump" on Fox News at 9 p.m. Saturday. It is Wiles’s first sit-down TV interview since Trump took office in January.
Wiles, 67, who has long worked in GOP political circles, co-chaired Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and was widely lauded as a major factor in his victory. She's the first woman to ever serve as White House chief of staff.
"I'd been in politics and government virtually my whole life and just sort of gravitated and graduated to this over the last several years," she said in the interview.
She said the timing was right when Trump asked her to help lead his campaign nearly eight years after his first inauguration and almost four years after he left the White House with the fallout from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot looming over him.
She felt ready for a challenge, she said.
"If you are in Trump world, you are hyper competitive — You want to win; you want to have; you want people to think what you think and believe what you believe and mold the country in the way you think best for us but also for our kids and our grandkids," she said. "That's what got me in it. That's what keeps me in it."
"I'm maybe quietly competitive," added the soft-spoken Wiles, who the president calls the "Ice Maiden" and "Ice Baby."
Wiles also explained how she views her role in the second Trump administration.
"I see my job as just sort of keeping the trains on the tracks and running on time here, so that the subject matter experts, and particularly the president and the vice president can do what they need to do to fix the country," she said.