Susie Wiles, the political tactician who managed Donald J. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, will become the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff when he takes office on Jan. 20.
Her selection was announced two days after Mr. Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, a resounding result that capped the political comeback of the former president, a twice-impeached felon who has refused to accept his loss in the 2020 election.
Ms. Wiles, 67, guided Mr. Trump to a likely sweep of all seven battleground states and a popular vote victory.
Here is what to know about her:
She may have staying power that Trump’s other chiefs of staff did not.
Ms. Wiles has shown an unusual durability for a Trump confidante, lasting the entire election cycle as a campaign manager along with Chris LaCivita.
Taking orders from a boss who famously told contestants “You’re fired” on “The Apprentice,” a line Mr. Trump incorporated into his campaign speeches, does not do wonders for job security. Just ask the four chiefs of staff whom Mr. Trump churned through during his first term as president — or some of the banished managers of his previous campaigns.
But Ms. Wiles has cultivated trust among Mr. Trump’s family members and, most important, with the former president, who is known for giving into his impulses.
Wiles avoids the spotlight (and Trump calls her ‘the ice maiden’).
During Mr. Trump’s victory gathering in West Palm Beach. Fla., on election night, as he was on the cusp of winning 270 electoral votes, he summoned Ms. Wiles and Mr. LaCivita to the microphone, congratulating the architects of his campaign.
Ms. Wiles demurred, keeping with a reputation for shying away from the spotlight.
“Susie likes to stay sort of in the back,” Mr. Trump said. “The ice maiden. We call her the ice maiden.”
Ms. Wiles speaks sparingly in public. When Mr. Trump was looking for a member of his inner circle to be a surrogate for him on conservative television in the late stages of the campaign, Ms. Wiles appeared to take another pass. Corey Lewandowski, who Mr. Trump brought back as an adviser after firing him from his 2016 campaign, filled that role.
She has a thick political résumé.
For more than four decades, the rough-and-tumble nature of politics has been a way of life for Ms. Wiles, who worked on the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In the Florida governor’s race in 2010, she helped lead the campaign of Rick Scott, a businessman who harnessed support from the Tea Party movement for a narrow victory in what was then a battleground that had started to lean Republican. (Mr. Scott now serves in the Senate.)
“If you don’t know her, you soon will, but @susie57 will go down as one of the greatest campaign strategists,” Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, wrote on X after Mr. Trump’s victory this week. “To the democrats detriment she has been a part of all the winning campaigns in Florida.”
Ms. Wiles was key to DeSantis’s political rise.
Ms. Wiles once plied her political skills for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, leading his political operation and plotting his path to national prominence before he banished her from his orbit and questioned her loyalty.
Ms. Wiles got her revenge.
Mr. DeSantis tried to chart his own course to the presidency during the 2024 election cycle, attempting to run to the right of Mr. Trump but struggling to gain traction during the Republican primary. He dropped out of the race just days before the New Hampshire G.O.P. primary and endorsed Mr. Trump.
Her father was an icon of the N.F.L.
Ms. Wiles’s late father was Pat Summerall, the famed N.F.L. broadcast partner of John Madden and a former kicker for three teams. He was a teammate of Jack Kemp, who served in Congress and was the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1996. Ms. Wiles took an early job as an aide to Mr. Kemp.
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