Late-night hosts reacted to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’s revealing interview with Vanity Fair.
Stephen Colbert
“If there’s one thing Donald Trump wants, it’s a hamburger,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show. “If there’s a second thing, though, it would be to make you think that you’re crazy. That’s why periodically, I like to remind all of you that you’re not crazy. What’s happening is crazy.”
And in the pages of Vanity Fair, “they confirmed it,” via 11 on-the-record interviews with Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles.
“And she dished, bish,” Colbert quipped of the unusually candid look into the White House. Among other things, Wiles told the magazine that though her boss doesn’t drink, he has “an alcoholic’s personality”.
“I think it’s amazing that he doesn’t drink, because he sure sounds like it,” Colbert laughed.
Over the past year, “we have watched Trump weaponize the justice department in unprecedented ways to go after his political enemies like James Comey and Letitia James,” he continued. But Wiles assured the magazine that Trump is “not constantly thinking about retribution”. She also said: “In some cases, it may look like retribution. And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”
“OK, then, I’ll do it,” said Colbert. “Donald Trump, I blame you!”
Wiles also defended Trump’s friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, because they were “young, you know, sort of young, single, whatever – I know it’s a passé word but sort of young, single playboys together”.
“Yes, young, single, sometimes married playboys in their 40s and 50s,” Colbert joked. “Couple of carefree rapscallions partying with teenage girls and splitting a box of Cologuard. You know – youth!”
The magazine reported that as part of her job, Wiles kept a free-standing video monitor next to the fireplace in her West Wing office with a live feed of Trump’s social media posts. “So there’s fire and a constant stream of Trump’s social media posts?” Colbert mused. “Are you sure that’s your office? Because it sounds like hell to me.”
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host celebrated “an early gift from the White House” with a “doozy” of an interview from Susie Wiles. “She’s said to be the most normal member of the administration,” Kimmel said. “She typically stays out of the limelight. They call her the ‘Ice Maiden’. But things got hot and melted down today after she spilled the beans on her unbalanced boss and his league of lowlifes at the White House.”
Over the course of 11 interviews, Wiles said, among other things, that she tried unsuccessfully to get Trump to stop trying to exact revenge on his political enemies; that indictments such as that of New York attorney general Letitia James were acts of retribution; that there was no evidence that Bill Clinton went to Epstein’s island; that she tried to talk Trump out of pardoning rioters from January 6; that Elon Musk is an “avowed ketamine user” and an “odd, odd duck”; and that JD Vance has been a “conspiracy theorist” for a decade.
On Tuesday, Wiles “attempted to smooth things over on Twitter with a post that was clearly aimed at an audience of one”, said Kimmel. In a lengthy post, Wiles called the article a “disingenuously framed hit piece” in which “significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the president was left out of the story”.
“That’s right, like when she said that the president has the personality of an alcoholic, she meant a fun alcoholic, like Barney from the Simpsons, you know?” Kimmel laughed.
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers touched on news that Trump is reportedly considering demolishing four federal buildings – “unless someone can explain to him why we even need the House of Representatives”, he joked.
Last week, Trump posted a headline from the Washington Examiner calling him the “most important president in maybe 100 years”.
“OK, but important doesn’t mean good,” said Meyers. “Like for example, it’s important to get that weird mole checked out.”
On Sunday, Trump posted a photo on Truth Social promoting his pay-to-play “gold card” immigration program for wealthy foreigners, with the caption: “get your Trump card today!”
“Where? At a Spencer’s Gifts?” Meyers wondered. “That doesn’t look like a visa, that looks like how you’d buy drinks at a Maga-themed barmitzvah.”
Trump also posted an image of a dumpster fire labeled “2020”. “Apparently his cognitive test didn’t include the question ‘who was president in 2020?’” Meyers laughed.
