President Donald Trump lavished praise on his chief of staff Susie Wiles (Pictured right), saying the ‘big shots’ were ‘scared’ of the woman referred to as the ‘ice maiden.’ ‘She’s the first woman chief of staff in the history of our country,’ Trump said of Wiles at an event on the South Lawn of the White House to honor all the political appointees in his administration.

‘I watch those men and she watches over them, and if they get a little bit out of line, they may be big, big shots, defense, they may be in Congress. They may be the biggest but they’re scared of her. They don’t want her coming after them,’ he said as the crowd roared its approval. He noted of Wiles that she’s ‘the most powerful woman in the world.’ And then he joked of her power: ‘One phone call and a country is wiped out.’ The crowd of 3,000 staffers laughed and cheered. Wiles has become a stoic but constant figure in the second Trump administration, laying down the law early on to the likes of former ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk.

A veteran of GOP politics, Wiles saw her first victory on Trump’s first day in office when he confirmed Musk would not have a desk in the West Wing. Musk was reportedly pushing for his own room just yards from the Oval Office but his DOGE team will instead be based in the Eisenhower building, which is across the road from the White House. The chief administrator of DOGE must also report to Wiles, a sign of her control over the White House. Experts have long believed Wiles, who ran Trump’s 2016 and 2020 Florida campaigns successfully, has what it takes to handle the president. ‘She has an abundance of charm and she’ll need every bit of it to survive this job,’ said Chris Whipple, author of a book on the 2024 Trump campaign, noting that there were four chiefs of staff in Trump’s first term.

Just two weeks before Trump took office, Wiles made it clear in an interview she was going to run a tight ship. ‘I don’t welcome people who want to work solo or be a star,’ Wiles told Axios. ‘My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.’ Trump’s first term in office was marked by infighting, backstabbing and leaks. Aides set up competing fiefdoms inside the West Wing and battled among each other to have the most influence on the president, a dynamic that played out in real time like a reality TV show. Nicknamed the ‘Ice Maiden’ by Trump himself, Wiles takes a no-nonsense approach to her job. She is the first woman to occupy the chief of staff’s office.

Wiles is a mother and grandmother who is a lifelong Republican who was all-in on the MAGA agenda when it hit the scene in the mid 2010s. She is the daughter of legendary former NFL player and commentator Pat Summerall. The White House chief of staff did press secretary work for years and worked as a campaign scheduler on President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. She was also chief of staff for the Mayor of Jacksonville, Florida from 1996-1999. She said early on that the staff are prepared to work long, hard hours in order to hit the ground running. ‘The West Wing staff is a mix of new and veterans — many are young, all are prepared to work punishing hours,’ she said. ‘To my core, I believe in teamwork. Anyone who cannot be counted on to be collaborative, and focused on our shared goals, isn’t working in the West Wing.’

Wiles is credited with running an efficient, well-organized campaign in 2024. During the Cabinet nomination process, she imposed a social media ban on his Cabinet nominees, ordering them not to post without approval. ‘While this instruction has been delivered previously, I am reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself,’ Wiles wrote in a memo reported by the New York Post. ‘Accordingly, all intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts without prior approval of the incoming White House counsel.’ One of the top responsibilities of the chief of staff is managing the president’s time and who has access to him.

Trump chafed at such restrictions in his first term in office, when he went through four chiefs of staff in four years. Aides often slipped into the Oval Office to speak to him, knowing he was most likely to listen to the last person in the room. Additionally, Trump also spoke frequently to outside advisers, family members and other people who got access to him – often upending processes and decision making with his last minute changes. Wiles is highly respected in politics and is credited with running a disciplined, professional campaign operation that gave Trump an enormous victory in November. 

Long before Wednesday night’s message, Trump has publicly talked of his admiration and respect for her. ‘Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected,’ he said in a statement when he announced her as his chief of staff. ‘Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again.’

However, she has been willing to give Trump some hard truths after the 2020 election loss and advised him on how to turn it around in the next cycle. ‘Coming to him after the 2020 election in [20]21 and telling him what he thought was the circumstance, wasn’t, which is how I got into all this,’ she revealed in a March interview. ‘He said, ‘well, can you fix it?” Wiles recalled. But he’s such a resilient person and he’s seen so much, it’s very hard to surprise him.’ She appears to be referring to how she helped Trump turn around his loss in 2020 into a win in 2024. The White House chief of staff has said that ultimately, her job is to ‘keep the trains on the tracks’ of Trump 2.0.