Transcript of Who is Susie Wiles? Experts discuss Trump’s new White House chief of staff

We're following the breaking news. President-elect Donald Trump tapping his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, as his incoming White House Chief of Staff. It's Trump's first major staffing announcement as long-time allies jostle for the most coveted jobs. Brian Todd is joining us right now. Brian, it looks like Trump is prioritizing loyalty as opposed as he starts building his team. He is prioritizing that wolf as he always has. And his first major choice for a position, one of the most crucial jobs in any administration is reflective of that. I love loyalty. Donald Trump's first pick for his new administration is a testament to his value of true loyalty. Susie likes to stay in the background. She's not in the background. Susie Wiles, Trump's co-campaign manager for 2024, who's just been named White House Chief of Staff, is called tough, smart, and innovative by her boss, and has been praised for running an efficient campaign. You want somebody, ideally, who knows you, who understands understands you, who can give you good advice, but who can also implement well, who can carry out directions. She seems to be that type of person. A source says Wiles told Trump she would only take the job if she could have more control over who could reach him in the oval office.

Hello, everybody. As for the public face of the Trump administration, Caroline Levet, who was Trump's campaign spokeswoman, is said to be in strong consideration for the significant job of White House Press Secretary. For the position of attorney general, one of the most sensitive, important jobs in any administration, and one that Trump might use to go after his enemies. A name being floated is Ken Paxton, Texas's attorney general. I'd like to open a betting pool as to how many days, not weeks, months, or years it will take for Ken Paxton to start doing very controversial things that even Trump won't like. Like Trump, Paxton has been both indicted and impeached. Paxton was acquitted by the Texas State Senate for alleged retribution against whistleblowers, interference in federal investigations, and inappropriate favors done for donors. For Secretary of State, a key national security position, Trump's reportedly thinking of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who's hauchish toward China and was a finalist to be Trump's running mate. I think most people think that would be a responsible choice. It would be somebody who does know international relations, who has been around these issues now ever since he got into the Senate.

But what to do with Robert Kennedy Jr? Trump's him a top public health position. But Trump advisors tell CNN Kennedy's already caused headaches for the Trump team, like an interview he did with MSNBC just hours after Trump's victory speech. Their entire department, just like the nutrition departments at FDA, that have to go. Rfk Jr, if he has the President's ear, could put in place anti-vaxxers, anti-fluoride people above scientists. Meanwhile, regarding billionaires Mayor Elon Musk, who might lead a team in the Trump administration that's dedicated to cutting the size and budget of the federal government, a source familiar with the conversations around Musk tells CNN it seems unlikely that he would want a full-time government position, given what that would mean for the companies he owns: X, Tesla, and SpaceX. Wolf, we'll see what happens with Elon Musk. The greatest man in the world. All right, thanks very much, Brian Todd. Our political experts are here with me in the Situation Room in Jeff Zeleny. The choice of Susie Wiles to become the White House Chief of Staff. She's the campaign manager. She did very well. Very impressive. What does it signal? It signals that the President-elect is ready to get started, and he knows his way around the job this time around, considerably more than four years ago.

Four years ago, or eight years ago, excuse me, when he was being elected, he was coming from private business from Trump Tower. Now, he'll be coming to the oval office. He knows what he wants. He knows the people around him. Susie Wiles is a singular figure, I would say, in the former president's and President-elect's rise. I cannot think We have a person who has had as much a discipline. She has respect both inside and outside. She's someone who has not worked directly in Washington. She has a lot of long-standing Washington relationships at several firms in town, as Brian knows well. But she also has goodwill. But she will be the first female chief of staff. I think that is something that sends a message and a signal. But our Steve Contorno had some good reporting earlier. He said she had a couple of demands, and one was this, The clown car can't come into the White House at will, and he agrees with a source close to the President Alexis. So that signifies that Susie Wiles is going to try and keep a level of discipline. She has her own explanation for that. She allows Trump to be Trump, but she also to keep some outsiders at bay.

But the chief of staff is so important in setting the agenda and keeping things going. As we all know, it's just about 10 or 12 steps or so from the oval office. It has a corner office in the west wing. It's important in terms proximity and power. It's very important indeed. I think it's really important that she set out these parameters and said in advance, I will do this, but I have to be able to control access. This was a problem that other chiefs of staff, most notably Kelly, complained about because Trump had this open-door policy and anybody could just wander in. I think it shows a certain amount of discipline that she's going to try and enact inside the White House. Brian Lanza, you work with Susie Wiles. You know her. Give us a sense. What does this say to you? Best in class. I mean, Donald Trump made a decision. He's going to choose best in class, and Susie Wiles is best in class. You said, All right, continuity. You had continuity in the campaign, and now you're going to have continuity in the administration. I think Trump made the best decision for himself, the best decision for a party and for the country.

Susie knows how to execute, and that's the most important thing that President Trump wants. He doesn't want a lot of people talking. He wants people to execute, and she knows how to execute as well. She knows that she has a tremendous amount of relationships here in Washington, DC. She has the trust of the President. She has the trust of campaign staff. A lot of us would walk through fire for her, and we're excited she has it. I do like to point out she's a woman. My daughter can now have an example of a woman hitting a position of power like this, and I think that's a good thing for this country. Let's talk about what's going on on another key issue. Amisha Cross is with us as well. Trump said today that his proposal for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants will have, in his words, I'm quoting him now, no price tag. What does that suggest to you about this massive effort that he's about to undertake? That he doesn't know how the system works. I do think that Donald Trump is going to go outside of all things civil rights. He's going to go outside of all things justice to try to come through on a campaign promise.

He wants to make sure that he is eradicating the undocumented population. He is not just speaking about new arrivals. He's talking also about people who've been in this country for the past 20, 30, 40 years. To do that seismically, to have to have law enforcement that are correlating at the federal level as well as in the states and cities across this country, that does require a significant amount of money. We've seen what that price tag is. But because he recognizes the American public does not like big price tags on anything, he is, I think, lying flagrantly here about being able to do this without a cost associated. All right, Jeff, as you know, Democrats will no longer control the new Senate once it comes back to Washington The House potentially remains in play right now. But do the Democrats really have the ability, assuming the House stays Republican, do the Democrats have any ability to affect real policy? No. I mean, not if the House is in Republican control. It obviously depends what the margins are. I mean, the margins in the House, regardless, will be slim. So as long as the House stays unified, which is always an open It's a question, of course, but Democrats will have limited policy control in both chambers.

However, in the Senate, it still requires 60 votes on some things, and Republicans will not have 60 votes. But I think the finger-pointing and the soul-searching that is underway right now in the Democratic Party, it's not unique to Democrats. It happened in Republicans over the years. I'm thinking back to when Barack Obama was reelected in 2012, and Republicans were talking about, We need to do an autopsy and figure out really how to rebuild the party. Parties get rebuilt on personalities and people we may not even be thinking about now. But for the short term, Democrats will have to make a decision if they're going to be part of the resistance, or some may find some need to cooperate on some things. I think Senator Schumer has already said, We'll work in a bipartisan way on some things. But look, Democrats now, particularly if they don't control the House, which it looks like they won't, but we will see a lot of seats still must come in. They're in the wilderness for a minute. Well, and they're going to be in the wilderness for a while, and they need to go to the couch and try and figure out what went wrong in this election.

Because I was talking to a Democratic pollster who said, Look, this is what he would call a rolling realignment in this country, and it is based on class. The Democrats, the roles have been switched. The Republicans used to be the Party of the Elites. That's not the case anymore. The Democrats are known as the Party of the Elites, which is the reason they lost many Hispanic male voters, for example. This is a huge issue for them. It wasn't a message problem or a messenger problem per se. They have a problem with voters in this country, and they have to figure out where they want to work on, say, immigration reform and where they don't want to work with the Republicans. They have to figure out where they stand on a bunch of stuff and get their act together, to be honest. I agree with certain parts of that, but I don't think that this was as much of a messaging problem as some people are trying to make it out to be, as much as it is a policy not meeting where people are conversation. Because if you're going to say that the Democrats were not the party of the working class or have abandoned them, which I've heard several working class people say, then I question how or why there is no connection between all of the union and workers rights that were granted during the Biden-Harris administration.

Why when you have a president who is fighting for a living wage, fighting for a higher minimum wage. Why when you have somebody who is, as of today, there was an announcement about Snap benefits being expanded for people who are on college campuses because a lot of them can't afford to eat. When I see things like that and you're talking about individuals who are literally working tirelessly, the Democrats in the House, as well as President Biden and Kamala Harris, to ensure that individuals every day can feed their families and they have the policies to prove it. People who are beneficiaries of said policies are still arguing, even though the Trump administration previously and Trump have largely only done one thing. They have made tax cuts readily available to the rich and have increased the 1% class to stay there forever. Listen, I would add that it's important to realize the role that inflation played in this. Inflation played a huge role. It clouded everybody's judgment. It changed people the way they think. When a mother can't feed their child, they don't care about anything else. I think the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton was very strong.

The Democratic Party of Barack Obama was really strong. You can't say that about Joe Biden, but they focused on bread and butter issues. This coalition of Joe Biden got broader than it should have been, and they didn't know how to say no to certain constituencies. When Donald Trump was in office, I do recall it was the Thanksgiving before he left. The man was about to cut food stamps. If we're talking about people who are taking food out of families' mouths that need to eat, he was leading that charge. Voters made a decision that the inflation that has bankrupted them, the inflation that has caused them to max out their credit cards the inflation that has caused them to wipe their savings, clouded everything. Well, they didn't feel it, and there wasn't a good enough explanation about what happened, why. She didn't want to change anything. What you're going to do. Remember, Harris says there's no changes. That's a problem. There were some things that I think were going to be stagnant regardless, particularly because coming out of the pandemic, we saw in every developed nation, leaders did not get reelected. I think that holistically, there are people across the globe who are having those similar issues, and it was just really hard for any incumbent to say things.

We begin tonight Donald Trump's choice of his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, to be White House Chief of Staff, to do a job that four others did with varying degrees of success and frustration in the first Trump administration, in which CNN has learned she put conditions on taking. Especially, one source tells us concerning access to the President, or in the source's words, The clown car can't come into the White House at will. That same source adding, And he agreed with her. Now, late today, in a statement announcing his decision, the President-elect said, Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally that is relatively admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to make America great again. She certainly had a job to do as a campaign manager for a candidate acknowledged to be difficult to manage, and a President who frustrated several chiefs of staff the first time around. In thanking her and her fellow campaign official, Chris Lassavita. He highlighted her preference for avoiding the spotlight. Let me also express my tremendous appreciation for Susie and Chris, the job you did. Susie. Come, Susie. Come here. Come here, Susie. Chris. Come here, Chris. Susie likes to stay in the back, let me tell you.

The Ice Baby. We call her The Ice Baby. Susie Wiles is the first of many people who will be chosen to serve in the second Trump administration, the critics and supporters alike say, will differ from the first, something that Donald Trump Jr. Underscore today, while saying he'd have a role in this election process. I'm going to be heavily involved on the transition. I want to make sure now that we know who the real players are, the people who will actually deliver on the President's message, the people who don't think that they know better than the duly elected President of the United States. He seems to be suggesting there'll be fewer independent thinkers, more loyalists than before, to carry out many promises that Trump made on the campaign trail. On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history. And if these companies don't make their products here, then they will be paying a stiff tariff when they send their products into the United States for the privilege of competing with our workers and our now protected companies. I will end the war in Ukraine. I will stop the chaos in the Middle East, and I will prevent World War III from happening.

We will build a missile defense shield massively. We are going to build the greatest, the biggest missile defense shield. We're going to protect kids in America, and we're going to get men out of women's sports in America. Bobby Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, RFK Jr. And he's going to work, and he does. He's very strong on the pesticides and all of the different things. We'll talk more tonight about how he plans to deliver on some of that and some of the repercussions, if he does, especially from his deportation plans. First, though, more on the Chief of Staff appointment as he then scripts in home. So what should people know about Susie Wiles? Well, Susie Wiles is a Trump loyalist. She is one of the only people, Anderson, who stuck by his side after he left Washington in disgrace in 2021. She came to work for him, and she really stuck with him throughout the entire campaign. She served as de facto Chief of Staff after his first term. I was there on election night when he threw a fit, this was in 2022, excuse me, because none of his candidates won. She was by his side then.

She was by his side when he announced his candidacy shortly afterwards, and she has remained by his side. I do think one of the important things to point out here is that quote that our colleague, Steve Contorno, got from someone who was an ally of Susie Wiles about the clown car, because that is something that she did and did well on the campaign. One of Susie's mottos when she talks to people close to her is that she can't control Donald Trump, and she understands that, but she can control everything around him. That means access to the former President, now President-Elect. That is clearly something that she is going to do in the White House. They believe she did this well. It was keeping controversial figures away from Donald Trump. Obviously, she couldn't always do it, but it was trying to keep the chaos around him, who is a chaotic person, to a minimum. Now, this is really setting the tone for the entire administration because it is clear that she is someone who is taken seriously in Republican circles, particularly not just the MAGA side of things, but also the establishment side. People respect Susie Wiles.

So this is really giving you an indication of where this is going to go. But first and foremost, Anderson, the thing that he cares about most is the fact that she was loyal to him. Who are some of the other people being talked about for high-profile jobs? Yeah, there's quite a long list here. And again, I want to just make sure that we are being clear that there's going to be a lot of jockeying, and these positions are going to roll out. We know some of them might come as early as this week, but these names are just some of the names that are being floated around. So for Secretary of State, one big one, Senator Marco Rubio. This has been floating around since he didn't get vice president. One thing to note, Don Jr, top advisor to Donald Trump, his father, lashed out at Marco Rubio, had some really nasty things to say when he was up for vice president. So we'll see how that plays out. Next, attorney general, which is going to be one of the most important positions in Donald Trump's administration because Donald Trump wants to control the Justice Department.

Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, is on that list. Mike Lee, also on that list. I also want to add one name we don't have on this one, but it's John Ratcliffe, the former director of National Intelligence. These are all names floating around. Elon Elon Musk, he's up for some government efficiency advisor. One thing to note about that, Donald Trump has joked about the fact that Elon Musk will not join the government. He doesn't want to get rid of any of his properties, any of his companies. He's going to have to divest. We are told that this is likely going to be a workaround for Elon Musk in some form of a committee or advisor role. Now, obviously, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, we're very interested in that. A public health advisor, likely. We'll see how this all plays out. We know that RFK has been talking about how he wants to be potentially a secretary. Elise Stefanik for UN ambassador. That's one that I'm told she's already met with the heads of the transition team, and potentially, Caroline Levet for press secretary. This is moving fast. As he named Susie Wiles today, we'll see what the next position he puts forward is.

All right, Kristen Holmes. Thanks. Joining us now is Republican strategist, Sure Michael Singleton, senior political commentator, David Axelrod, journalist, Gretchen Carlson, co founder of Lift Our Voices, and Sabrina Rodriguez, national political reporter for the Wall Street... Excuse me, for the Washington Post. David, what do you make of the pick for chief of staff? Look, I've said many times here during the course of this campaign that Donald Trump had... That the Trump campaign, they had a rational campaign and an irrational candidate. She kept the campaign. She and Chris Lassevita kept the campaign on track, and they did, to a large degree, keep the clown car away. It's tougher in some ways in Washington, but... Yeah, talk about that. I mean, the role of the chief of staff, you saw this, obviously, in the White House. Herself under the Obama administration. In the former Trump administration, there were meetings with some of the sketchy leaders. Well, my guess is the one thing she's going to do is try to tightly control who goes into that oval office so that people can't wander in and influence things without her knowledge. And that's going to be very important. I mean, a chief of staff, if a chief of staff is empowered, can be really, really important in terms of the paper flow to the President, the people that the President sees, the decision tree.

It can be very important. But I'll tell you this, chief of staff is very effective if the feeling around Washington is that chief of staff has the confidence of the President and the fact that they've developed this close relationship, very important. Sure, Michael, as a Republican, what do you think of this? I'm excited about it. I've known of Susie Wiles for a very long time, and there are people who are not necessarily pro-Trump, but who are pro-Susie Wiles, because to them this signals that the second coming of Trump presidency is going to be very different. She's a trusted thinker. She has several decades of political experience, and she is someone who can prioritize and manage an operation. David, you know this very well. That's going to be critical to David's point of controlling the flow of information and access to the former President. Having someone that he trusts who can set up those guardrails will be critical to making sure that whatever types of judgment calls that are made, the best advisors are getting to him first and not anyone else. So I feel very confident about how this is shaping up so far. Controlling, though, I mean, obviously, Donald Trump is a unique figure in American politics, and given what we've seen, the I mean, there's only so much one can do, I imagine.

Well, she obviously was doing something right because she's lasted a long time with him. And the idea that she was as disciplined with him as possible. I mean, I'm thinking about Laura Loomer, who was with him during the 9/11 ceremonies, which was not a good look, and she probably wasn't happy about that. One thing I want to focus on, though, is that she's the first female chief of staff, which when I heard that today, I was like, wow, that has never happened before. The first thing I thought of actually after that was Mark Cuban owes her an apology for saying that Donald Trump was not surrounding himself with strong and smart women because obviously she's been able to hang on to this role as a smart, strong woman with Donald Trump this long. I did also like the fact that she's going to keep the clown car out. I think Donald Trump is influenced by the last person he speaks to. And so that's really important. And I also thought about the fact that he brought in Cory Lewandowski this past summer, and I'm sure she didn't like that as well, because the talk at that time was maybe she's going to be on the way out, and Cori Lewandowski is going to be higher up.

So I think this is well-deserved role for her. Sabrina, you've followed the campaign, obviously, very well. I think For me, what's going to be interesting is seeing voter reactions to this. I think voters are less concerned about who exactly are the people that are going to be executing the policy. What they want to see is Donald Trump come into office on day one and do the things that he promised he was going to do. A lot of these things are very lofty, ambitious plans. I mean, to execute the largest mass deportation effort in US history is going to require a lot of coordination. We know from extensive reporting that behind the scenes, Trump allies have been planning for this for a while. Really, it's a question of watching him set up things in the next few months to be able to start implementing those things on day one. In terms of selecting people, David, in a new administration, what is that process generally like? They have an advantage this time. They've done it before, so they know what mistakes they made the last time. Obviously, a lot of people have been thinking about this, and they've had a process going on.

Loyalty seems to be very top of the list. What happened the last time was they had a transition team, but there was When Chris Christie was heading that transition team. He had differences, or Jared Cushner had differences with him and took his transition report and threw it in the garbage. Obviously, it's a little more orderly. Now that she's empowered as the Chief of Staff, you'd think that she is going to play an even larger role in this. One thing we should mention, this will mean nothing to you, Anderson, but a lot of people will know this. Pat Summerall was her father, who was a great football player and a kicker, and broadcaster. She's been around blocking and tackling all her life. That'll be useful. Is it... Michael, you heard Donald Trump Jr. Saying he's going to be very involved in looking over the vetting process It's the hiring process. Loyalty, clearly, they feel that they had people around the president, then President Trump, the last time, who were trying to control his impulses. It seems like they don't want that same type of person around. I think Susie Wiles is going to try to do a little bit of that.

But I think, look, he's the President. You want individuals who are going to serve the President and serve him well. I was a part of the transition team in 2016 when Dr. Carson went to HUD. I'm very familiar with that process. You have some good people. You don't have some not so good people, I suppose. I got a feeling this time, though, Anderson, looking at some of the names we've seen suggested for some of those key roles, this is going to be different. You saw Sabrina talk about the mass immigration. How are you going to execute that? You need people that are going to be able to do it and do it well. What is that going to look like? Who are you choosing? There are a lot of complexities there. I think if you're looking at this from Trump's perspective, you're looking at the first 60 to 90 days, not only immigration, but also the economy. What is that going to look like? What's going to be the focus there? I think it's not necessarily about finding people who are uber-loyal to the President, but loyal to trying to bring to fruition his ideas for the American people.

I think that this time around, he's going to win the popular vote. And so I think that he feels like his mandate, he has more power in his mandate, thinking that a majority of the American citizens want him to do what he campaigned on, whether or not that's true to the 46 other % who didn't vote for him, that's another story. But I think that he's going to take control in a different way this time. He didn't understand Washington, DC, when he came in in 2016. So he brought in people who understood it better than he did, and he clashed with a lot of those people. It's also, it's really interesting to see what role vice President Vance will have in this administration? Obviously, when you're running, you see the vice president out campaigning a lot. As we saw when Biden took office, vice President Harris disappeared from public view for a long time. I think it's an open question at this point how involved Vance is going to be or what exactly Donald Trump will want to see him doing. I mean, if it's going to be having Vance out, touting what Trump is doing in those first really being a cheerleader for Donald Trump, I think we'll see some of JD Vance.

If JD Vance goes off script and gives some different messaging around how things are going to be executed, I think he'll be in a more behind the scenes role and what we expect from vice presidents often.