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Analysis

Susie Wiles, the strategist who turned chaos into Trump's win

"It's like fog, you know it's there, but you can't touch it," a retired Florida lobbyist said of the new chief of staff.

Wiles to be first woman to serve as White House chief of staff/ Joe MarinoCordon Press

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Two days after winning the November 5, 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump announced that Susie Wiles would be his chief of staff. Although she is unknown nationally, she is a universally respected woman, mother and grandmother in politics, both among those who like her and those who don't. Despite having years of management and political campaign experience, her latest move was, against all odds, getting Trump back into the White House.

Despite being one of the most powerful and exposed women of the moment, it is striking that her magic lies precisely in her discretion. There is even talk that her work "feels more than it looks."

"If you don't know her, you soon will, but Susie will go down in history as one of the best campaign strategists. To the Democrats' detriment, she's been part of every winning campaign in Florida," veteran Florida lobbyist Ronnie Book said of Wiles, who added the following in an interview with Politico: "And nobody even knows who she is."

Indeed, when Trump gave his victory speech on the night of Nov. 5, he invited Wiles to say a few words before the world, an invitation she graciously chose to decline under the gaze of millions of people in the United States and around the world.

"It's like fog," Mike Hightower, a retired lobbyist, told the same media outlet. "You know it’s there, but you can’t get your hands around it," he added.

Who is Susie Wiles?

The future most powerful woman in Washington was born May 14, 1957, in New Jersey. She is one of three children of legendary NFL player Pat Summerall and his wife, Kathy Summerall.

Her political beginnings were working with former congressman Jack KempBob Dole's vice presidential candidate in the 1996 election. She later worked in Ronald Reagan's administration, whom he once defined as "everybody's grandfather." She even continued to work for him after he left the White House.

In the 1990s and 2000s, she began to forge her legend in Florida, working for two centrist mayors of Jacksonville: John Delaney and John Peyton. There, she began to develop her network of political, business and journalistic contacts.

Nationally, in 2008, she served as co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign in Duval County. During his 2012 candidacy, she also served as co-chair of Mitt Romney's advisory council in Florida.

2010 was her breakout year in terms of her name weight in Florida. Five weeks after initially donating to Bill McCollum's campaign, she signed a contract with the person who defeated him in the Florida gubernatorial primary: Rick Scott.

Since then, she has successfully managed the campaigns of Donald Trump (2016 and 2020) and Ron DeSantis (2018) in Florida.

"I'll have to ask Susie"

Always soft-spoken and cordial, she prefers to be in control of the candidate's time and manage his press-facing strategy. When Scott refused to meet with newspaper editorial boards across the state in 2010, some reporters questioned him why. "I'll have to ask Susie," the then-gubernatorial candidate replied.

In addition to handling campaign narratives very well, she specializes in building great teams. Carlos Trujillo, a campaign adviser who served as U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, said those who have worked for Wiles "would take a bullet for her."

"She always made sure her people were taken care of. he's very soft spoken, but she holds everyone accountable, and it's always done through love and kindness but never a place of hate," he added.

Even her rivals recognize her expertise in campaigns, especially those that are not easy to win. "She was already the most successful, well-respected Republican operative in Florida by a long mile, and she’s now cementing that brand," Ashley Walker, a Florida Democratic strategist, said.

To save hours of research for the press, she summarized the list of her job specialties on LinkedIn:

  • Critical thinking
  • Creative solutions
  • Creating order from chaos
  • Building relationships
  • Managing perceptions
  • Campaigns political strategy
  • Lobbying
  • Legislative strategy
  • Public policy
  • Crisis communications
  • Strategic communications
  • Media relations
  • Public relations
  • Community outreach

"Ron DeSantis is going to regret the date he fired her"

Although Wiles worked for DeSantis to win the 2018 gubernatorial election, which he won by a mere 0.4 percentage points, things did not end well between the two.

According to Politico, the DeSantis family perceived that Wiles was taking too much credit for the victory and had an agenda of her own. Not content with firing her, he also talked Trump's entourage into dropping her.

This, of course, did not sit well with Wiles, who described her work for the Florida governor as "a mistake." Despite being largely inactive on social media, on the day DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race, she logged into her X account and simply wrote a "goodbye." That post was subsequently deleted.

During the past Republican primaries, Wiles leveraged her experience with DeSantis to slowly undermine his candidacy. In other words, she knew how and where to hit him.

Very slowly, stories about DeSantis began to appear in the press, almost like they were surgically placed. David Jolly, a former Florida state congressman, told Politico that Wiles knew "exactly how to beat Ron DeSantis on behalf of her client (Trump)."

Leveraging her media savvy and narrative building without leaving much of a trail, bit by bit, the media agenda had more and more things to criticize about the Florida governor. From his "strange" interactions with voters, the height regulators in his boots and even the way he eats pudding.

"I wrote a story about Casey DeSantis last May. 'The Casey DeSantis Problem,' read the headline. In it I quoted a DeSantis donor by name: 'She is both his biggest asset and his biggest liability.' I wrote that story because of what I’d heard in the course of my reporting. And I now think I heard what I heard in some basic way because of Wiles," Michael Kruse of Politico said.

"These are characters, not because you want to create one, but because that’s what they are — people are consuming this through media formats — and so we created a caricature of one of our opponents, and so now he’s the weird oddball in the show that nobody’s rooting for. There’s lots of ways to defeat a candidate" a Wiles contributor told Kruse on condition of anonymity.

"And we all knew it was her," added a Republican consultant who endorsed DeSantis' presidential bid.

Chief of Staff

Wiles also managed Trump's second presidential campaign in Florida and moved closer to him in 2021, which was precisely one of the most uncertain times in the Republican's political career. With January 6 still fresh, Trump chose Wiles to manage his return to the White House.

Since then, she has become a very trusted adviser. Trump would remind people that she was "in charge." During the campaign, Wiles would be very candid with Trump, who, despite not always taking her advice, "listens to her."

She managed to maintain order in the campaign and achieve a disciplined message that ultimately ended up resonating with voters in each and every key state.

Last Nov. 8, she was announced as chief of staff, the first woman to hold the post since its creation in 1946. "It is a well-deserved honor to have Susie as the first female chief of staff in U.S. history. I have no doubt she will do our country proud," Trump said in the announcement.

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