Wiles is one of the most powerful players in Republican politics, who ran Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election and who has just become his next chief of staff.
In his statement on Thursday evening Trump said that Wiles “just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history” and “is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected”.
“It is a well deserved honor to have Susie as the first-ever female chief of staff in United States history,” he continued. “I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”
Wiles, 67, is the first woman to be appointed White House chief of staff and in his victory speech in Florida the President-elect Donald Trump mentioned her previously little-known name seven times.
“Let me also express my tremendous appreciation for Susie and Chris —the job you did. Come, Susie,” Trump said. “Susie likes to stay in the back, let me tell you. We call her the ice maiden”, he joked, adding. “She is not in the background (anymore).”
A ruthless political operator, for the past 12 months her focus has been on absolute victory. And on Thursday evening, Trump confirmed her as his White House new chief of staff.
The Hill political newspaper called her “the most powerful Republican you don’t know”; The New York Times described her as “perhaps the most significant voice inside Mr Trump’s third presidential campaign”.
But who is she, and what makes this cake-baking, bird-watching 66-year-old grandmother tick?
Wiles has worked in Republican politics since the late 1970s and went on to become a campaign scheduler on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential bid, and later in his administration. In her late twenties, she moved from New Jersey, where she was born and raised, to Jacksonville, Florida, with her then-husband, Lanny, an “advance man” who handled publicity for candidates during political campaigns.
When the couple had their two daughters, Katie and Caroline, she took some time out to raise them but then went full-throttle back into the game – eventually running Trump’s Florida operations in his first bid to become president. Many attribute him winning the state by 1.2 percentage points over his rival Hillary Clinton to Wiles.
……..It was a savvy “Team Trump” that recruited Wiles to the campaign. By taking all the “craziness” that surrounds Trump and adding what Schorsch calls a “disciplined ground game”, it seemed to be the sleight of hand helped Trump along to victory. Schorsch noted how Mar-a-Lago became “so much more disciplined since Susie became the chief gatekeeper.”
What’s more, he thinks that Wiles sees no need to rein in Trump’s worst excesses. “It’s a much more pragmatic ‘let Trump be Trump’ philosophy: he says certain things to the Maga crowd, but he also offers an incredible tax policy to the billionaire crowd, and they like that. I don’t want to say she’s made a deal with the devil, but she knows what Trump’s about.”
…….Nate Monroe, a columnist for the Florida Times-Union newspaper who has known Wiles in his capacity as a journalist for a decade, says her critics would say that sweet, personable demeanor “masks a very, very calculating, hard-charging operator. As much as she is very well thought of, she is equally feared. And she is a dangerous person to cross.”
But the unhinged libs insist that Trump is a misogynist.