FLASHBACK: Trump’s Chief of Staff-to-Be Susie Wiles Remarked That You ‘Take the Good with the Bad’ with Him

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Susie Wiles, the architect of President-elect Donald Trump’s successful 2024 campaign, was named his chief of staff-to-be in a statement released by Trump on Thursday.

“Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns,” declared Trump. “Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again. It is a well deserved honor to have Susie as the first-ever female Chief of Staff in United States history. I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”

Wiles obviously thinks highly enough of Trump to have worked tirelessly toward making him commander-in-chief. But in an interesting moment during an interview with Politico‘s Michael Kruse earlier this year, she remarked that you have to “take the good with the bad” when pressed about Trump’s character and election denialism.

Asked about the January 6 Capitol riot, Wiles said that she “didn’t love it,”  and insisted that she “didn’t think he [Trump] caused it.”

“I sort of think, maybe naively, that if everybody knew what I knew — what I know — they wouldn’t feel as some do about Donald Trump. Does that mean I think he’s perfect? There are certainly things I would do and say differently — absolutely,” she continued. “You can’t get the Trump policies without the Trump personality. That’s not original — that comes from Lindsey Graham — but I believe it completely. And so you just sort of take the good with the bad with everybody.”

Wiles also compared Trump to her late, famous, alcoholic father, NFL announcer Pat Summerall, submitting that “They would on paper seem dissimilar, but they’re just not that dissimilar.”

“Susie’s primary qualification for handling Donald Trump is her training in handling her father. She is an expert in unstable, dysfunctional, famous men,” one fellow Florida operative told Kruse. “She knows when she can help, and she knows when not to try to help, and for that they’re grateful.”