TOI Correspondent from Washington: A woman nicknamed “Ice Maiden” will occupy the hottest and most powerful seat in Washington DC after the one behind the Resolute Desk.
President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday named Susan Wiles, 67, as his White House chief of staff, an influential cabinet post because she will be the right hand to the President, serving as a virtual sentinel and gatekeeper, and also run the White House executive office. She will be the first woman to occupy the post.
Wiles, who is also a grandmother, has been rewarded for piloting Trump to victory in the presidential election, where she was the MAGA supremo’s chief campaign manager. “Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history….(she) is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected,” Trump said in a statement on his first political appointee who was his campaign manager in Florida in 2016 and 2020 before she was catapulted to the national stage.
A backroom operator, she does not relish the limelight, evident in the way she shrank back when Trump asked her to say a few words during his victory speech. She has worked with a range of Republican leaders going back to Ronald Reagan, and is expected to bring order and discipline to the White House — to the extent possible with Trump at the helm.
Wiles surprise appointment, considering she has very little government experience, came amid jockeying and speculation over a range of cabinet and administration appointments and talk of retribution from MAGA operatives. In one podcast, right-wing lawyer and commentator Mike Davis, reportedly on a shortlist to serve as Attorney General or White House counsel, threatened to put a New York prosecutor in jail if she continued to pursue cases against Trump.
“I dare you to try to continue your lawfare against President Trump… listen here, sweetheart, we’re not messing around this time and we will put your fatass in prison for conspiracy against rights,” Davis told a MAGA podcaster in remarks directed against NY Attorney General Letitia James, who is prosecuting Trump cases in the city and said in a news conference after the election that her office will continue to hold Trump accountable in his second term.
While Trump himself has been circumspect after his election, his MAGA flock is drawing up hitlists of enemies in both Democrat and Never-Trumper Republicans circles, and in the administration: Among them, special counsel Jack Smith, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, former Trump lawyer and turncoat Michael Cohen, and even the troika of Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi.
At various times during his campaign, Trump has threatened to impeach or prosecute his enemies, particularly those he believes perpetuated election fraud and denied him a second term in 2020. “We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” Trump warned in one social media post in September, threatening to target “lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials.”
While Biden and Harris have promised a peaceful and orderly transition to a Trump White House, some progressive Democrats are warning the US is about to enter an authoritarian phase. “Donald Trump has talked about turning the military on US citizens that he deems his domestic political enemies… in authoritarian regimes, it’s not uncommon to jail political dissidents or legislative opponents. This is the world that we very realistically may be entering,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez warned.
