When Susie Wiles agreed to be Donald Trump's chief of staff, one of the first things she did was huddle with former chiefs to get their advice. Reportedly, they told her one thing she should definitely not do was talk to Chris Whipple.

Fortunately for all of us, Wiles did not take their advice. Whipple, a well-respected reporter and author of the 2017 classic "The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency," is known as the walking encyclopedia of chiefs of staff. But Wiles not only agreed to talk with him, she gave him 11 interviews over the last 11 months - every one of them, as she agreed, recorded on tape - and revealed by Whipple in this month's Vanity Fair. It's worth subscribing to, just to read the whole article.

All I can say is: Thank you, Susie! For me, it's the first present under the Christmas tree. Just in time for the holidays, Susie Wiles has given us all a gift: a peek behind the curtain into the personalities and workings of the Trump White House. And it ain't pretty.

While Wiles continues to profess her loyalty to the Trump team, she proceeds to dump on the whole bunch of them, starting with the president himself. Initially, she recounts, Trump agreed to limit retaliation against his perceived political enemies to his first 90 days in office. Promise broken. With the total cooperation of Attorney General Pam Bondi (more later), he's still busy at score-settling.

About January 6, Wiles told Whipple she tried to persuade Trump to pardon only those who just wandered into the Capitol without engaging in any violence, and certainly not those who were seen on camera assaulting police officers. Trump refused. He insisted on pardoning the whole lot.

Surprisingly, Wiles also admitted she believed Trump's tariffs were more harmful than he would admit, suggested his anti-immigration crusade had gone too far and said Trump was dead wrong when he claimed that Bill Clinton had once visited Jeffrey Epstein's island.

Asked to describe what it was like being so close to Trump, Wiles told Whipple it was like working for someone with an "alcoholic's personality" - which Trump immediately said he considered a compliment. Really? Medical experts list the following personality traits of an alcoholic: self-centeredness (prioritizing personal needs); impulsiveness (difficulty controlling urges); manipulativeness (use of deceitful tactics); emotional instability (exaggerated emotional reactions); defensiveness (irritable when confronted); and perfectionism (unrealistic self-expectations).

That may define Trump to a "t," but only in Trump's world would that be considered a compliment.

After undermining the image of Trump himself, Wiles proceeded to belittle many of those around him. She put down Vice President JD Vance as a "calculating conspiracy theorist," dismissed HHS Secretary RFK Jr. as "quirky Bobby," called OMB Director Russell Vought a "right-wing absolute zealot," and dismissed one-time Trump pal Elon Musk as an "odd, odd duck" and "avowed ketamine user."

Among Cabinet members, most of Wile's scorn was directed against AG Pam Bondi for her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, starting with Bondi's distributing binders about Epstein to a group of social media influencers at the White House in February. "I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this," Wiles said of Bondi. "First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn't on her desk."

For me, the most stunning quote in the interviews was Wiles description of her own job. "I hear stories from my predecessors about these seminal moments where you have to go in and tell the president what he wants to do is unconstitutional or will cost lives. I don't have that," Wiles told Whipple. WTF? If that's not her job, what is her job?

Upon publication, in true Trumpian fashion, Wiles attacked the Vanity Fair article as a "hit piece." But nobody believes her. She agreed to the interviews. Every one of them was taped. And the White House has not cited one case where she was misquoted.

Unwittingly, perhaps, Susie Wiles has performed a valuable public service. She has confirmed our worst beliefs in how bad things really are in the White House. The United States is led today by a bunch of amateurs, not one of whom, starting with Donald Trump, is qualified for the job they hold. God save the Republic.

(C)2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. 

Pete Hegseth: Yes, Virginia, there is still a Santa Claus

If there's one thing never-Trumpers need this holiday season - and, remember, we are the majority of Americans! - it's a bit of good cheer. Here it is.

First, let's not kid ourselves. These are still perilous times. Every day, Donald Trump does something more outrageous, more destructive, more un-American - and gets away with it. In the last few weeks alone, he's launched an illegal war against Venezuela, blowing up 23 small boats and intercepting an oil tanker on the high seas; declared France, Italy, Germany, and Spain America's new enemy; pardoned the former president of Honduras convicted in helping smuggle tons of cocaine into the United States; torn down the East Wing of the White House; sent the military into Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis and New Orleans; unleashed ICE to track down and arrest brown-skinned American citizens; admitted he would personally intervene in the competition between Netflix and Paramount over who would buy Warner Brothers in order to kill CNN. And announced the EPA is loosening rules on exposure to formaldehyde, which is just what families need, instead of lower grocery prices.

Sheesh! It's too much to keep up with. There's not enough outrage to go around. As the New Yorker's Susan Glasser recently wrote, the "new normal is we have to forget about yesterday's scandals in order to make room in our brain for tomorrow's."

However, as bleak as it is, I see glimmers of hope, no matter how faint, in two places: Trump's political problems and personal problems.

Start with the political. Almost every candidate Trump endorsed this year lost. He lost in the Virginia race for governor, the New Jersey race for governor, the mayor's race in New York City - and this week he lost in the mayor's race in Miami. In a stunning win, Eileen Higgins became the first Democrat to lead Miami in almost 30 years, trouncing Trump-endorsed Emilio Gonzalez 59 percent to 41 percent.

Democrats also won down-ballot races: flipping two state Senate seats in Mississippi; electing two Democrats to the Georgia Public Service Commission; flipping 13 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates; and confirming three Democrats to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The only race a Trump-endorsed candidate won was last week's special congressional election in Tennessee. But, even there, Republican Matt Van Epps only won by 9 points in a district Trump carried by 22.

The numbers don't lie. Trump's a political loser, and everybody knows it.

But Trump's also in trouble on the personal front. There are signs he's suffering from both physical and mental decline. While the White House is in total denial, two headlines generated a lot of news this week. The Express blared: "White House in State of Panic as Trump Keeps Falling Asleep." And the Drudge Report asked: "Why Hasn't His Hand Healed?"

Twice this week, Trump was caught on camera dozing off. During a three-hour Cabinet meeting, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio was praising his foreign policy prowess, Trump, sitting next to him, slumped back in his chair with eyes closed, clearly catching a few z's. He also dozed off the next day while hosting leaders of Rwanda and the Congo. Looks like "Sleepy Joe" has been replaced by "Dozing Don."

Also caught on camera, and tracked for months by the Drudge Report, Trump often wears a bandage on his right hand, which also appears swollen. The White House shrugs it off as the result of shaking so many hands, but several medical professionals have raised questions about signs of serious venous insufficiency. He was spotted with one or two bandages on his right hand every day last week.

And then there's Trump's mental health, or lack thereof. For years, leading psychiatrists have warned that Trump is mentally unfit to be president, which is more and more evident each passing day. Any doubts about his mental illness disappeared after a 488-word rant Trump released in the middle of the night, December 10, on Truth Social.

It's not enough to read it. As MS-NOW's Philip Bump said, you have to hear it out loud to make "the bonkers-ness sink in." So here, dear friends, thanks to AI, is a link to the president of the United States howling at the moon. Listen and cringe.

If the CEO of any company acted that way, he'd have been escorted out of the office by health professionals in white coats.

So, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. The wheels are starting to come off the Trump train. Just not fast enough.

(C)2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

You will know him by his friends

Nothing was more important than family in the small town of Delaware City, Delaware, where I grew up. Our extended family, the Cook Cousins, numbered in the dozens. And whenever the whole clan - grandparents, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, cousins - got together, especially after maybe the second round of drinks, we always broke out in song.

Most of the adults had a favorite song which, with little coaxing, they would perform every time. Uncle Blondie's was "Autumn Leaves." Aunt Kass was famous for her "Ave Maria." My father had his own favorite, an old English pub tune called "The Pig." I've no idea where he first heard or learned it, but he belted it out with glee. I can still hear him singing it:

It was an evening in November,

As I very well remember,

I was strolling down the street in drunken pride,

But my knees were all a-flutter,

And I landed in the gutter

And a pig came up and lay down by my side.

Yes, I lay there in the gutter

Thinking thoughts I could not utter,

When a colleen passing by did softly say:

'You can tell a man who boozes

By the company he chooses'--

And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

After which, we would all laugh and applaud and my father would take his bow. He never explained the meaning of his ditty. He didn't have to. It was clear to all: You can tell who a man is by his friends.

I couldn't help but think of that man lying in the gutter with a pig when I saw President Trump roll out the red carpet and a military jet flyover to welcome Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to the White House this week. Remember: this is the man who came to power in 2017 by locking up hundreds of wealthy Saudis in a Riyadh hotel until they agreed to let him become the country's de-facto leader. And while he's applauded for letting women drive and go to the cinema, this is also the leader of a country where independent journalists are arrested or "disappeared," where political opposition is forbidden, where beheading is the preferred form of execution, and which still does not recognize Israel.

Remember also this is the leader who, according to our own CIA, personally approved the gruesome murder and dismemberment of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Yet when an ABC reporter raised that issue to Trump and MBS in the Oval Office, Trump berated her for "embarrassing our guest," threatened to cancel ABC's license, and waved it all off - the murder of an American journalist! - with the disgusting comment "Things happen."

Of course, MBS is only one of Trump's best buds. Don't forget Vladimir Putin, whom Trump calls "highly respected" and under whose rule, as described by Senator Bernie Sanders: "There is no freedom of speech. Protests are violently suppressed. Tens of thousands of people are imprisoned for speaking out against his rule. And the bravest and most prominent dissidents - people like Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Magnitsky - are murdered outright." And whose forces have killed some 14,000 civilians in Ukraine.

Earlier, in July 2018, Putin also got the special MBS treatment when Trump said he didn't believe the CIA when it concluded that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election. "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be," he sniffed.

Then, of course, there's convicted sex pervert Jeffrey Epstein, whom Trump hung out with, chased women with and welcomed at Mar-a-Lago - for 15 years! Epstein's gone, but Trump's already rewarded Ghislaine Maxwell, his partner in crime, by transferring her from a federal prison in Florida to a new country club facility in Texas and has said he's open to issuing her a presidential pardon.

With friends like these! It's so true. You can tell who a man is by his friends. A ruthless dictator, a convicted pedophile and a man accused by the CIA of approving the murder of an American journalist. I'll leave it up to you. You tell me what those three friends tell you about Donald Trump.

(C)2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.