Trump Campaign Manager Offers Less Than Glowing Review of Candidate: ‘You Just Sort of Take the Good With the Bad’

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Susie Wiles, senior advisor and de facto campaign manager of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, offered a less than glowing review of her candidate in a new Politico profile of the Republican operative.

The longform article delves deep into Wiles’ personal and political background, including her complicated relationship with her famous father, former NFL player and broadcaster Pat Summerall.

Many associates of Wiles have wondered at how she could work for and with Trump given her own gentle personality and associations with the GOP’s establishment-wing, a question Politico‘s Michael Kruse pressed Wiles herself on during a sit-down.

When asked about the January 6 Capitol riot and why that wasn’t a “breaking point” for her professional relationship with Trump, Wiles admitted that she “didn’t love it,” but 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,” said Wiles. “But people don’t know what I know.”

“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,” she continued.

Wiles also said that she saw similarities between Summerall — an alcoholic who largely ignored his children — and her client. “They would on paper seem dissimilar, but they 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 submitted. “She knows when she can help, and she knows when not to try to help, and for that they’re grateful.”