| | | |  | | By Jack Blanchard with Dasha Burns | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine, Ali Bianco and Rachel Umansky-Castro On today’s Playbook Podcast: Jack and Dasha discuss the fallout from the explosive Vanity Fair profile of Susie Wiles.
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| Good Wednesday morning. This is Jack Blanchard. Get in touch. In today’s Playbook … — The real Susie Wiles stands up … and D.C. is hanging on every word. — Republicans are finally moving forward with health care, kind of. Get ready for votes today. — And Jack Smith is back in the spotlight. Republicans are preparing for battle.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles' interviews with Vanity Fair have set off a media storm in and around the administration. | Tom Brenner/AFP via Getty Images | WHAT EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT: Vanity Fair’s gripping, unmissable profile of Susie Wiles exploded across D.C. yesterday. Every group chat was lit; every morning meeting overtaken; every water cooler conversation — for those of you that still work in offices, and still drink from water coolers, and still have real conversations — landed upon the exact same question. Why did she do it? Until yesterday, Wiles’ performance in the most important staff job in Washington — possibly the world — had hardly been questioned. Compared to the rolling chaos of Trump 1.0, this Trump operation has been a relatively slick machine, delivering key policy objectives and owning the political narrative without the catastrophic infighting of the first administration. Everyone in Washington, puts that down to Wiles. She’s made the job of Trump’s top White House aide look easy, once a seemingly impossible feat. (Just ask Reince Priebus. Or John Kelly.) That picture was clouded yesterday when it emerged Wiles has also spent the past year quietly giving candid, on-the-record interviews to Chris Whipple, for the extraordinary two-part Vanity Fair profile that dropped yesterday. They spoke in her White House office. They spoke on the phone as she drove to Mar-a-Lago. They spoke over lunch. They “often spoke on Sundays, after church,” Whipple wrote. Obviously, the White House claims of a stitch-up can be dismissed. This administration only has one gear when responding to media coverage it doesn’t like. The write-up was fair, and Wiles said what she said. Nobody is disputing the quotes. In fact, Wiles actually comes across as supportive of her boss, clear-eyed about her colleagues, realistic about the scale of the challenge and candid about (some) missteps of 2025. The profile would have made perfect sense if it was one of those tell-all interviews that dropped after she finally stepped down from her job. But for a serving chief of staff, it’s a jaw-dropper. This was a project she’s been working on with Whipple all year long. Of course she made candid remarks over the course of 11 interviews — who wouldn’t? Those who know Wiles well say the type of candor on display in this profile is exactly how she comes across in person, and is one of the reasons she’s so respected by her colleagues. They just …. didn’t expect her to put it all on the record. “Why Vanity Fair?” wondered one White House official, speaking to POLITICO’s White House team yesterday. “They’ve never been remotely good to us.” The interview was “extremely demoralizing,” said one person close to the White House. A second person close to the White House said simply: “So far … WTF.” A third person said they’ve known Wiles for decades and were “very surprised” that she participated.
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Explore our ongoing work. | | | | So again — why did she do it? Your Playbook author heard a million cooked-up theories yesterday about how and why this article came to be. (And watch this space — every media reporter worth their salt is chasing details right now.) This was hardly about delivering a political message to core voters. Trump does that with multiple news conferences, every week — as do surrogates like Karoline Leavitt and Stephen Miller on Fox News. Long-form profiles in Vanity Fair? Not so much. There are really only two reasons — and both are intertwined, and both can be true — why a White House chief of staff might agree to a profile like this. Firstly — well, they call it Vanity Fair for a reason. Which person over the age of 40 working in politics doesn’t secretly want a glitzy spread in Vanity Fair? Who doesn’t want the glammed-up photoshoot and the timeless posterity and everything else in one of the great legacy mags? Clearly Leavitt, Miller, JD Vance, Marco Rubio et all were pretty into the idea, judging by the photo shoot. (Standout highlight: Rubio staring at a lamp.) The other reason would be about establishing legacy, and here, the identity of the author is a clue. Whipple, of course, literally wrote the book on White House chiefs of staff. Speaking with him is almost a rite of passage in that job. Who better to help frame your place in history, to present a glimpse of your real nature and your real thoughts to the world? It’s hard to draw any other conclusion. There are two big takeaways from the profile itself, and one more from what happened afterward. First, we now know the White House chief of staff has been harboring serious doubts about aspects of the Trump 2.0 project: the USAID cuts, the deportation process, the mass Jan. 6 pardons, Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files. There were more. Second, we also now know the White House chief of staff has thoughts on some of her senior colleagues. The stuff on Trump and his “alcoholic’s personality” was interesting, but not as gasp-inducing when placed in context. Much more interesting was how much more positive Wiles sounded about her fellow Floridian, Marco Rubio, than she did about his 2028 rival JD Vance. The line on how Bondi “whiffed” on the Epstein files was brutal. And Wiles really didn’t sound like a fan of Elon Musk, at least not as a White House aide. Finally, the reaction yesterday was telling in itself. This was a full rally-around-the-flag moment for Wiles’ team, with Trump himself plus key surrogates including Vance, Leavitt and Donald Trump Jr. all fanning out to deliver highly supportive messages to the media. Bondi called Wiles a “dear friend.” Plenty of others weighed in. The message was crystal clear: Support for Wiles is rock solid. That’s indicative of the fact Trump is unbothered by any of this. He knows how central Wiles is to the success of this project. And he knows instinctively that — gripped as we are inside the Beltway by a glimpse of the real Susie Wiles — this is not a story that’s going to move markets elsewhere. Trump, then, will quickly move on. Today he will be attending a solemn ceremony alongside first lady Melania Trump in Dover, Delaware, for the dignified transfer for the two Iowa National Guard members killed in an attack in Syria. Then tonight, he’ll be addressing the nation live at 9 p.m. Pretty much every major network has confirmed to Playbook it’s carrying the address live, including FOX, NBC, CBS and ABC, plus Fox News and CNN. (This hasn’t always been the case — as Barack Obama and Joe Biden may recall.) That’s good news for the White House … but a disaster for fans of the still popular reality show “Survivor.” Its epic, three-hour finale will be interrupted this evening for an injection of Trump.
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| | | | BILL OF HEALTH TODAY IS THE DAY: Speaker Mike Johnson is moving forward with House Republicans’ health care package today — albeit one without an extension for the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies and without any amendments that moderates hoped to secure in the plan. The procedural vote is teed up for 10:30 a.m., while final vote on the bill is slated for the afternoon. The real-world impact: Lawmakers will officially leave town for the holiday break without a vote on extending the critical ACA subsidies, meaning that health insurance premiums for millions of Americans will spike as the calendar flips to 2026. Opportunity cost: The House GOP health package could lead to 100,000 fewer people per year having health insurance through 2035, but would save the government $35.6 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office report, per POLITICO’s Robert King. There may still be some drama left. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) could oppose the rule vote after an amendment from Rep. Chip Roy was made in order on her bill to limit transgender surgeries for minors. And some GOP moderates are thinking about joining the discharge petition led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for a three-year extension of the subsidies if they aren’t allowed a vote on an extension, POLITICO’s Meredith Lee Hill reports. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) indicated that he might join that discharge push, but he won’t oppose the rule or the GOP health bill. More from POLITICO’s Inside Congress Looking ahead: The Problem Solvers, of which Fitzpatrick is co-chair, is huddling with rank-and-file senators today to discuss a framework that includes an ACA extension and other health policy items for January.
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| | | | MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON SPECIAL TREATMENT: Jack Smith — the former special counsel who brought federal charges against Trump related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his handling of classified documents — is set to privately testify before the House Judiciary Committee at 10 a.m. It’s a tricky position for Smith that amounts to a “political and legal minefield,” POLITICO’s Hailey Fuchs and Kyle Cheney write this morning. The tightrope: During his testimony, Smith “must navigate Byzantine secrecy laws and rules that limit what he can disclose to lawmakers” all while “Republicans are looking to trip him up and incriminate him” and “portray him as a tool of a weaponized Justice Department — an allegation they’ve brandished amid recent revelations that Smith obtained phone records of at least eight GOP senators as part of his probe into Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election results.” A gag order of sorts: “Ultimately, though, there are restrictions for what Smith can and cannot tell members. He remains bound by grand jury rules that bar prosecutors from disclosing evidence that was never made public, at least without the permission of a court,” per Hailey and Kyle. “And in his capacity as a former Justice Department employee, he’s also limited in what he can share about his prosecutorial work.” What you can expect: Despite the private nature of today’s testimony, the House members who will be hearing from Smith aren’t bound by any restrictions and Democrats and Republicans on the committee will surely be out with competing takeaways once Smith has wrapped. Top-ed: Former Trump lawyer John Dowd defends Smith in an op-ed for MS NOW: “Jack Smith was once my adversary in a high-profile investigation of a Republican client. In that investigation, Smith proved himself to be fair, impartial and fearlessly committed to the facts and the law. He was unmotivated by partisan politics. But recent attacks on Smith are motivated by partisan politics, and they are untethered to the facts or the law.”
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Learn more. | | | | BEST OF THE REST FED UP: Trump will today interview Christopher Waller as a dark-horse candidate to take over as Fed chair, WSJ’s Brian Schwartz and Nick Timiraos report. Though officials caution the process could change on a dime, Waller would join Kevin Warsh and Kevin Hassett as leading candidates to replace Jerome Powell next year. Trump put Waller on the Fed board during his first term, and (helpfully) the governor has since advocated for rate cuts. But he’s “seen as a heavy underdog because he lacks the personal relationship with Trump that both Warsh and Hassett enjoy,” per the WSJ, and because some close to Trump see him as “disloyal” for cutting rates ahead of the 2024 election. First up: Waller will get a chance to pre-empt his interview when he speaks on the economic outlook in New York this morning. Perhaps he’ll even offer his own grade for the current state of the economy. (JD Vance went with “A-plus-plus-plus” yesterday; that’s two pluses fewer than Trump offered to Dasha last week.) Hatchets out for Hassett: Intriguingly, Waller’s last-minute interview comes as some voices in Trump world privately question whether Hassett is actually up to the job, POLITICO’s Victoria Guida reports. CARR TROUBLES: FCC Chair Brendan Carr is due before the Senate Commerce Committee at 10 a.m. — a long-awaited oversight hearing where senators are expected to press Carr over his comments threatening broadcasters for airing Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show back in September. While most of the heat is expected to come from Democrats on the committee, it’s worth noting Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sharply criticized Carr at the time of his original comments. And Carr won’t be alone: he’ll be joined by Commissioners Olivia Trusty and Anna Gomez. Brace yourself: Gomez, a Biden appointee, “is poised to sharply criticize the FCC’s posture under Carr on First Amendment grounds, arguing that it has damaged the agency’s standing and credibility,” according to prepared remarks obtained by Status’ Oliver Darcy. Carr will likely get cover from at least six GOP members on the committee who met him last week and told POLITICO’s John Hendel that they’re ready to move on from the Kimmel controversy. VENEZUELA LATEST: Trump ordered a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE” of sanctioned oil tankers in and out of Venezuela in a post on Truth Social, the latest move intended to ratchet up pressure on leader Nicolas Maduro. “It is unclear how Trump will impose the move against the sanctioned vessels, and whether he will turn to the Coast Guard to interdict vessels like he did last week,” Reuters’ Idrees Ali and colleagues report. . MAKE AMERICA HIGH AGAIN: Trump’s executive order to reschedule marijuana to a lower drug classification and ease federal restrictions is now set to be signed on Thursday, CNN’s Kit Maher and Kristen Holmes report. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — You’ve got mail: Republicans are embracing mail-in voting despite Trump’s long-held (and unproven) claims that the practice is rife with fraud, POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky reports. “Rattled by electoral losses across the country this year and fearing a turnout slump in 2026 … Republican party chairs and operatives in battleground states Trump flipped by razor-thin margins in 2024 are turning to mail-in voting to keep lower-propensity voters engaged when he’s not on the ballot.” HOT TOPIC: “Data centers have a political problem — and Big Tech wants to fix it,” by POLITICO’s Gabby Miller: “Alarmed by elections that candidates won by campaigning against new data centers, the industry is taking out ads and funding campaigns to flip the narrative and put data centers in a positive light — spinning them as job creators and economic drivers rather than resource-hungry land hogs. The new campaigns mark a sharp change for an industry that has long relied on tech’s image as an engine of growth and development. They signal how concerned the tech sector is becoming about data centers in the 2026 midterm elections.” THE OTHER AFFORDABILITY CRISIS: British PM Keir Starmer joined a chorus of prominent leaders weighing in on the escalating backlash over the insanely high 2026 World Cup ticket prices, urging FIFA to go further to keep the tournament affordable for fans, POLITICO’s Sophia Cai reports. Starmer’s comments come even after FIFA introduced a (tiny) number of lower-priced tickets, following pressure from national federations and supporters’ groups. MEDIAWATCH: Warner Bros. is “preparing to tell its shareholders to reject Paramount’s latest offer” as soon as today and “plans to recommend they support its existing deal with Netflix instead,” WSJ’s Lauren Thomas and Joe Flint report. “That would leave Paramount and its chief executive, David Ellison, to decide whether to sweeten its offer.” Yesterday, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, which had joined the Paramount bid, pulled out of the takeover battle, Bloomberg’s Michelle Davis and colleagues report.
| | | | Sponsored Survey WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: Please take a 1-minute survey about one of our advertising partners. | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | SPOTTED: David Ellison and Makan Delrahim in Tosca’s main dining room last night with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). ... Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) at The Roost yesterday. KASH IN, KASH OUT — There weren’t too many big takeaways from FBI Director Kash Patel’s interview — country singer girlfriend Alexis Wilkins in tow — with Katie Miller’s podcast. (It dropped last night, with the FBI still in the midst of a manhunt for the Brown University shooter, though the episode began with a message that it was taped before the shooting.) We learned Patel and Wilkins’ favorite D.C. restaurant is Filomena, and his favorite show is Paramount+ crime drama “Mayor of Kingstown.” But more excitingly for Patel fans, Wilkins was asked if she’d written any love songs for the FBI chief. “You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked that,” she replied. “But yeah, I have. I’m waiting to come out with new music next year.” This never happened with J. Edgar Hoover, it’s fair to say. Watch the whole episode HAVING A BALL — Construction work on the White House ballroom can continue, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled yesterday, denying the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s request for a temporary restraining order, per POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney. But the price tag keeps ballooning: Trump said last night the cost of the ballroom was now $400 million of donated cash — that’s double the initial $200 million estimate, and another leap from the $300 million we got to last month. He also said the new space will “handle inaugurations” and be equipped with five-inch thick glass, “impenetrable by anything but a howitzer.” THIS IS STILL HAPPENING — Heritage Foundation trustees Shane McCullar and Abby Spencer Moffat have resigned following the fallout over the video in which Heritage President Kevin Roberts defended Tucker Carlson in the wake of his interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, Just The News’ Ben Whedon reports. “Though they did not mention Roberts or Carlson, McCullar referenced antisemitism while Moffat condemned ‘lapses in judgment’ from leadership.” OUT WITH THE OLD — A statue of Barbara Rose Johns — a 16-year-old Black teenager who fought against segregation in the 1950s — was unveiled at the Capitol yesterday, replacing one of Robert E. Lee, WaPo’s Gregory Schneider and Laura Meckler report. ’TIS THE SEASON — Laura Loomer is now engaged, as first reported by … the president during a White House Christmas party. IN MEMORIAM — “Norman Podhoretz, Influential Editor and Neoconservative Force, Dies at 95,” by NYT’s Joseph Berger: “Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary magazine and a lion of neoconservatism, whose intellectual odyssey took him from embracing the left to condemning a world order that in his eyes had become spineless in the face of Soviet expansionism and, later, Islamist militancy, died on Tuesday. He was 95.” Read his son John’s tribute for Commentary OUT AND ABOUT — Leaders from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the Muslim Public Affairs Council hosted a joint briefing on the need for both Jewish and Muslim communities on the Hill yesterday, featuring remarks from JCPA’s Amy Spitalnick, MPAC’s Salam Al-Marayati and Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.). SPOTTED: Haris Tarin, Maggie Siddiqi, Frederick Davie, Kevin Rachlin, Stacy Burdett, Matt Dorf, Emma Saltzberg and Paul Brandeis Raushenbush. — SPOTTED at a Chanukah celebration hosted by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) last night: Reps. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), Wesley Bell (D-Mo.), Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Sean Casten (D-Ill.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Herb Conaway (D-N.J.), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), Laura Friedman (D-Calif.), Craig Goldman (R-Texas), Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), David Kustoff (R-Tenn.), George Latimer (D-N.Y.), Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.), Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), Sarah McBride (D-Del.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), April McClain Delaney (D-Md.), LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), Dave Min (D-Calif.), Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), Deborah Ross (D-N.C.), Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Darren Soto (D-Fla.), Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) and Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.). — SPOTTED in Rayburn yesterday for an event where Heavenly Kimes, who is running for Georgia’s 13th Congressional District, was honored with the Excellence in Healthcare Access Advocacy Award 2025 from GSA Global Eye Magazine: Reps. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.), Danny Davis (D-Ill.), Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), Cleo Fields (D-La.), and Michael Guest (R-Miss.). TRANSITIONS — Miguel Ayala is now comms director for AIDS United. He previously worked for Rep. Steven Horsford (D-N.M.). … Seth Cohen is now a senior adviser at the Independent Center. He previously worked at Forbes Media. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Tracey Mann (R-Kan.) … Mike Abramowitz … National Review’s Noah Rothman … Joe Ballard … WaPo’s Sabrina Rodríguez … Tom Quinn … Randall Gerard of Cogent Strategies … Jessica Stone … Kelli Arena of the NSA … Bloomberg’s Chris Collins … Valeria Ojeda-Avitia … POLITICO’s Brendan Bordelon and Claudine Hellmuth … Olivia Shields of America’s Communications Association … Adam Finkel … Taylor Foy of the CFTC … Holly Harris of The Network … Allan James Vestal … former Rep. Steve Knight (R-Calif.) … Bailey Childers … Jessica Lovejoy of GovAct … Tommy Hicks … Eli Pariser of New_Public … Mark van de Water … BGR Group’s Emma Vaughn … Aryeh Bourkoff … John Glenn of JKG Strategic Partnerships … Chelsea Manning … Shane Smith … Carol Thompson O’Connell Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our deputy editor Garrett Ross. | | | | Follow us on X | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Canada Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | |
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