Welcome to The Red Letter.
CHRIS WHIPPLE is the man everyone in Washington is talking about. The envy of the town, you could say because he has landed an extraordinary piece in Vanity Fair of White House reporting: arguably the first truly eye-opening, on-the-record account of how this White House is actually run.
Whipple has Chief of Staff Susie Wiles speaking on the record — a rarity for a famously reticent figure — and, possibly for the first time since this president took office, openly throwing daggers at her colleagues.
Long before this interview, I reported for The Red Letter — through background sources — how Wiles really feels about her colleagues and the dysfunction inside the West Wing, including in my piece Fear and Loathing in the West Wing. Officials told me in March how deeply Wiles resented Elon Musk for treating her, in one aide’s words, like a “fucking secretary,” and that she had complained about him directly to the president.
But now, she doesn’t mince words. She told Whipple he’s an “avowed Ketamine user.” Not really a surprise considering he admits he uses infrequently.
The reason so many aides have been reluctant to speak to the press, frankly, is because Wiles herself doesn’t. That’s what made her silence so powerful. But with this interview, the floodgates appear to be open and it raises the question of whether even more leaking is now inevitable.
In Whipple’s reporting, Wiles calls J.D. Vance a “conspiracy theorist,” labels budget director Russell Vought a “right-wing zealot,” and describes the president as having what she calls “an alcoholic’s personality.” It’s a characterization he oddly affirmed when he backed Wiles to the New York Post. She accuses Pam Bondi of completely whiffing on the Epstein files. And she openly admits that the Letitia James mortgage fraud case is an act of retribution — a stunning acknowledgment that could fundamentally undermine that prosecution.
But there’s much more.
Wiles also makes clear that the president was lying when he claimed Bill Clinton had visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island. And beyond the domestic chaos, she effectively concedes that the administration is pushing for regime change in Venezuela, and that talks with Vladimir Putin are not going nearly as well as the White House has publicly suggested.
In other words, this wasn’t just candid — it was explosive.
In this conversation, Whipple takes us inside how this reporting came together, how he secured this level of access, and what these revelations tell us about the power dynamics and fractures inside the White House. We consider what this piece could mean for unity, loyalty, and control in the West Wing going forward.
Thank you Michael Volpe, Reda Rountree (she/her), Brian Cunningham, Orange Bully™, Heidi Iwasko, and many others for tuning into my live video with CHRIS WHIPPLE! Join me for my next live video in the app.
