{"id":25940,"date":"2025-12-18T10:20:48","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/column-some-truth-leaked-out-of-the-white-house\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T10:20:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:20:49","slug":"column-some-truth-leaked-out-of-the-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/column-some-truth-leaked-out-of-the-white-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: Some truth leaked out of the White House"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Some truth leaked out of the White House<\/h1>\n<h2>Introduction to a Troubling Reality<\/h2>\n<p>There is a Santa Claus. There is light amid the darkness. Vanity Fair\u2019s two-part chronicle of interviews with Susie Wiles, President Trump\u2019s heretofore tight-lipped and uber-credible White House chief of staff, is a Christmas and Hanukkah gift to the nation in this holiday season.<\/p>\n<h2>Revelations and Confirmations<\/h2>\n<p>By her monthly on-the-record observations to author Chris Whipple since just before Trump retook power, Wiles has put a stunningly bright bow around the first year of Trump 2.0, lit an entire menorah of revelations and confirmed, if inadvertently, that the president is indeed woefully unfit for the office \u2014 just as first-term Cabinet members warned us.<\/p>\n<h2>A Mirror to the Ugliness<\/h2>\n<p>The Vanity Fair pieces dropped on Tuesday as Americans from right to left were choking with revulsion at Trump\u2019s obscene \u201ceulogies\u201d on Monday to Hollywood icon Rob Reiner, essentially blaming the director for his and his wife Michele\u2019s slayings, allegedly by their long-troubled son. Together the stories \u2014 Wiles\u2019 gobsmacking gift of candor and Trump\u2019s descent to a new low in sliming a beloved dead man \u2014 held up perhaps the most revealing mirror yet to the ugliness that is the president.<\/p>\n<h2>Character and Consequences<\/h2>\n<p>What Americans saw is a man whose only character is bad character. A man bent on retribution, ignorant of government and heedless of the lives he\u2019s ruined in this country and abroad. As monstrous as Trump\u2019s visage has been shown to be, however, the fact that we are united in disgust should offer hope at the holidays. Hope that in the new year voters will put the brakes to Trump\u2019s depravity by electing candidates in midterm elections who won\u2019t continue to enable him.<\/p>\n<h2>Wiles&#8217; Disclosures<\/h2>\n<p>Wiles slammed Vanity Fair\u2019s work as a \u201chit piece\u201d in a social media post, but she identified no factual errors among her real-time disclosures. Among them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The teetotaling Trump has an \u201calcoholic\u2019s personality\u201d and thinks \u201cthat there\u2019s nothing he can\u2019t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.\u201d <\/li>\n<li>At the year\u2019s start, Wiles and Trump agreed that he could spend his first 90 days as president \u201cscore-settling\u201d against his political enemies, but Trump characteristically reneged and continues to this day. <\/li>\n<li>Against Wiles\u2019 advice, Trump insisted on granting clemency to even the most violent convicted cop-beaters among the Jan. 6 rioters.<\/li>\n<li>Trump\u2019s tariffs have been \u201cmore painful\u201d and his deportations campaign more cruel \u2014 and cruelly mistake-prone \u2014 than it should be.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Further Revelations<\/h2>\n<p>There\u2019s more: Wiles was \u201caghast\u201d at the demolition of the U.S. Agency for International Development; she knew it did \u201cvery good work\u201d with humanitarian aid, but Trump \u201cdoesn\u2019t know the details of these smallish agencies.\u201d Trump\u2019s extrajudicial strikes against small boats in Latin America really are about regime change in Venezuela, not drug interdiction, as the White House claims: The U.S. military will keep killing unidentified people until Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro \u201ccries uncle.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Epstein and Maxwell<\/h2>\n<p>In the matter of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s child-trafficking charges, Wiles revealed, Trump is lying when he repeatedly claims that evidence incriminates former President Clinton. And although Trump was \u201cmighty unhappy\u201d that the Justice Department relocated Epstein\u2019s convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, to a country club prison, the president who overtly controls the department did nothing to reverse that grotesque move.<\/p>\n<h2>The Company Trump Keeps<\/h2>\n<p>Wiles confirms by her characterizations of her colleagues that Trump in this comeback term is surrounded not by \u201cthe best,\u201d as he once famously boasted, or by the sorts of experienced truth-tellers who restrained him in his first go-round, but by kowtowing creeps. Vice President JD Vance is a \u201cconspiracy theorist\u201d who converted from Trump critic to sycophant for political gain. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi \u201ccompletely whiffed\u201d in pandering to the MAGA base about releasing the Epstein files. Budget director Russell Vought, who repeatedly vowed to traumatize federal employees, is \u201ca right-wing absolute zealot.\u201d And Wiles described Elon Musk, the architect of the destruction of USAID and so much more, as \u201can avowed ketamine\u201d user and \u201can odd, odd duck.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Oversight and Madness<\/h2>\n<p>Contending with this clown car steered by the president, Wiles had been widely hailed as the grown-up who was at least trying to keep Trump and his toadies on some semblance of a course. But in the recent articles she comes off as one of the pack. Wiles explicitly doesn\u2019t see her role as constraining Trump, no matter how \u201caghast\u201d she is about one thing or another. Trump, the mad king, is indeed wholly unfettered and unfiltered. That Wiles is simply overseeing the madness is symbolized by what Whipple describes as a monitor in her office providing a live feed of Trump\u2019s posts on his Truth Social site.<\/p>\n<h2>Condemnation and Hope<\/h2>\n<p>Even on Fox News, commentators united in condemnation. One conservative columnist, Bret Stephens of the New York Times, assailed Trump as \u201cthe most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House,\u201d and another, Jim Geraghty of the National Review, savaged him as \u201ca hateful raging lunatic with all the empathy of Jeffrey Dahmer.\u201d Are we doomed to endure three more years of this? No. The latest string of bad news for Trump \u2014 including, significantly, on the economy \u2014 is breaking through in a way that little has before. That\u2019s evident in Republicans\u2019 election losses last month for local, state and federal offices.<\/p>\n<h2>Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>May the losses continue, and with them a humbling of the malevolent man in the White House. Happy holidays. Bluesky: @jackiecalmes, Threads: @jkcalmes, X: @jackiekcalmes<\/p>\n<h2>FAQs<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Q: What did Susie Wiles reveal about President Trump in her interviews with Vanity Fair?<br \/>\nA: Wiles provided candid observations about Trump&#8217;s personality, actions, and decisions, including his &quot;alcoholic&#8217;s personality,&quot; his bent on retribution, and his ignorance of government.<\/li>\n<li>Q: How has the public reacted to Trump&#8217;s recent comments on Rob Reiner?<br \/>\nA: The public has united in disgust and condemnation, with even conservative commentators on Fox News criticizing Trump&#8217;s remarks as hateful and lacking empathy.<\/li>\n<li>Q: What does Wiles&#8217; characterization of her colleagues reveal about the current administration?<br \/>\nA: It suggests that Trump is surrounded by individuals who are either incompetent, corrupt, or both, and who enable his destructive behavior rather than constraining it.<\/li>\n<li>Q: What hope is offered for the future?<br \/>\nA: The hope is that voters will recognize the depravity of the Trump administration and elect candidates in midterm elections who will not enable him, thereby putting a check on his power and potentially leading to a humbling of the president.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some truth leaked out of the White House Introduction to a Troubling Reality There is a Santa Claus. There is light amid the darkness. Vanity Fair\u2019s two-part chronicle of interviews with Susie Wiles, President Trump\u2019s heretofore tight-lipped and uber-credible White House chief of staff, is a Christmas and Hanukkah gift to the nation in this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-25940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/6dceffb\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5124x2690+0+363\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F37%2Ff5%2Fdc8ed3aa4d0fad647a735384e15b%2Ftrump-chief-of-staff-84783.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25943,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25940\/revisions\/25943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}