Trump's longest-serving chief of staff, Susie Wiles, resigns

Trump says Wiles will stay on with his political organization after departure

Susie Wiles gave President Donald Trump her resignation as White House chief of staff on Thursday night, a person familiar with the events said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation. Trump announced the move Friday on his social media site, saying deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller would take over the job, praising Wiles and saying she would continue to work for his political organization. Wiles confirmed the departure in a social media post of her own shortly after Trump’s announcement.

“Serving President Trump in the White House has been the honor of a lifetime. I’m so proud to have been a part of what we’ve accomplished together from securing our border and cutting taxes to strengthening our economy and putting America First,” she said in the post. She added that her commitment to “the President and the mission” would not change.

Wiles was the first woman ever to serve as White House chief of staff and the longest-serving chief of staff across Trump’s two terms. Trump cycled through four chiefs during his first four-year term: Reince Priebus, whom Trump fired after just six months; John Kelly, who served the longest at 17 months; Mick Mulvaney, who held the role for a little over a year in an “acting” capacity; and Mark Meadows, who served as gatekeeper for the 10 months before Trump left office.

Miller moves into the chief of staff’s office from the deputy role days after Republicans lost control of Congress in the midterm elections. He has long been a key member of Trump’s inner circle and one of his closest and longest-serving advisers, joining the long-shot 2016 presidential campaign as a speechwriter, and he has been a key architect of the administration’s immigration policies. Before that he was an aide to former Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who served as Trump’s first attorney general.

The departure also came months after Wiles indicated she no longer showed evidence of breast cancer following months of treatment for the disease, a diagnosis she went public with in March 2026. After revealing the early-stage diagnosis, she juggled surgery and treatments alongside her demanding job.

Six months later, she said she was “cancer-free,” indicating she no longer showed evidence of cancer after her pathology results came back clear. On social media, she thanked her family, friends and doctors along with “everyone who prayed for me, checked in, and supported me along the way,” and gave special thanks to Trump for his “unwavering support.”

“She’s tough,” Trump said of his chief of staff at a White House event in October. “She’s a tremendous fighter.”

In a rare interview with Fox News Digital last month, Wiles said she had not been planning to get the mammogram that ultimately detected her cancer because she was not due for one for several more months. Her doctor suggested she do the exam anyway because a mammogram machine was available that day and her schedule was too busy and unpredictable. “Had he not encouraged me to do it that day, I would have gone back to work and probably not thought about it again until July,” Wiles told the outlet. “We would be having a very different conversation in that case. Four months may not sound like a long time, but with cancer, early detection matters. I will always be grateful to my doctor for knowing me well enough to insist.”

Wiles, 69, is a veteran Florida operative who joined Trump’s team during his 2016 presidential bid to run the campaign in his adopted home state, performed the same role again in 2020 and then oversaw the entire 50-state effort in 2024. She is the second woman to lead Trump’s presidential campaign to victory, although she never embraced the formal title of campaign manager. Trump himself has said he was often told that Wiles led his “best-run campaign,” and she has been credited with steering the most disciplined of his three presidential bids. Often called the “ice maiden” by the president, she was seen as the obvious choice to serve as chief of staff at the start of his second term.

According to the wire service’s report, Wiles built her reputation as an operative who brought discipline to the president’s “chaotic style” and who shunned the spotlight — so much so that at Trump’s 2024 election night victory party, she repeatedly shook her head and avoided the microphone as Trump tried to coax her to speak to the crowd.

In December 2025, nearing the end of Trump’s first year back as president, Wiles became the headline when Vanity Fair published a series of interviews with her and other top administration officials conducted by the author Chris Whipple, an expert on White House chiefs of staff. The interviews stood out for their candor, unusual for a sitting chief of staff. Wiles said Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality,” although the president does not drink; said then-Attorney General Pam Bondi had “whiffed” in her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files; and remarked that Vice President JD Vance has been a “conspiracy theorist for about a decade.”

Trump and other administration aides rushed to defend Wiles, who in turn disparaged Vanity Fair for publishing what she called a “disingenuously framed hit piece,” although she did not deny making the comments attributed to her. In the interviews, which were conducted over a period of several months, Wiles also revealed a bit of her management style, saying she was “not an enabler.” “I try to be thoughtful about what I even engage in,” she said. “I guess time will tell whether I’ve been effective.”

Beyond Trump, Wiles ran incumbent Sen. Rick Scott’s 2010 campaign for Florida governor and briefly served as manager of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign. She spearheaded Ron DeSantis’ successful run for governor in 2018, but DeSantis would eventually urge the Trump campaign in 2020 to cut ties with Wiles, creating a rift that led to an effort by those in Trump’s orbit to mock DeSantis throughout his failed run for the Republican presidential nomination against Trump in 2024.

Wiles is the daughter of the late NFL player-turned-broadcaster Pat Summerall. She worked in the offices of former Jacksonville mayors John Delaney and John Peyton, and her first White House job was as a scheduler for President Ronald Reagan.

In addition to her government and campaign positions, Wiles has worked as a lobbyist and was a partner at Florida-based Ballard Partners, which rose to prominence in Washington during Trump’s time in the White House. Her varying list of clients included General Motors, a trade group for children’s hospitals, homebuilders and the city of Jacksonville. She was also registered as a lobbyist for the Venezuelan television network Globovisión, which was owned by businessperson Raúl Gorrín, who was charged in Miami with money laundering. The firm later called its work for Gorrín a mistake and said Wiles had almost no role in managing the relationship with Gorrín.