Susie Wiles Revisited

[00:00:01] Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike

[00:00:04] Mike's on Mic, a conversation about politics, government, and Jacksonville, with 50-year opinion leaders Mike Hightower, Mike Tolbert, and award-winning broadcaster and longtime political observer, Mike Miller.

[00:00:17] Welcome to another episode of Mike's on Mic. I'm Mike Miller. I'm in studio, but my two colleagues, Mike Tolbert and Mike Hightower, are both in their remote studios, and we're delighted that you're joining us today, and thank you.

[00:00:28] Today, we're going to be revisiting President-elect Trump's newly named Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, with Politico's Michael Cruz.

[00:00:36] Michael's a multi-award-winning senior writer for Politico who formerly worked with the Tampa Bay Times.

[00:00:42] In April, Politico published Michael's in-depth article about Susie, headlined,

[00:00:47] The Most Feared and Least Known Political Operative in America. That now has been changed to the most widely known political operative in America.

[00:00:56] So with that, Mr. Cruz, welcome back to Mike's on Mic. It's great to have you with us here.

[00:01:02] Thanks for having me back on. Good to be back on Mike's on Mic.

[00:01:06] Yeah, welcome, Michael. And let's go back to that really incredible in-depth article that you wrote about Susie last April.

[00:01:13] In the opening paragraph, you wrote, quote,

[00:01:37] When Trump introduced Susie at the victory party that night after the votes were in, he was effusive in his praise of her.

[00:01:47] But true to form, Susie deflected him. I'm sure you watched that night and saw what happened.

[00:01:53] And at that moment, I'd love to know what you were thinking. What was going through your mind about Susie Wiles and your relationship?

[00:02:00] Maybe surprisingly, I did not watch that. I've actually never seen that. I've certainly heard about it.

[00:02:06] I heard about it almost immediately. I think because it's so characteristic of Susie. Frankly, it would have been surprising had she reacted in that moment in any other way.

[00:02:18] It's always been a hallmark of hers, obviously going way, way back. As you all know, this is not a new thing that she's added to a repertoire in her time working for and around Donald Trump.

[00:02:30] But certainly it's something that I think has really helped her work the way she's worked and for as long as she's worked with Donald Trump.

[00:02:38] As much as he values her and respects her, I think he also very much appreciates the extent to which she does not want to be in the limelight and works to stay out of the limelight.

[00:02:50] But I think still, even in the wake of the announcement that she would, of course, obviously be his chief of staff heading into this second Trump term, there are probably still many people who wouldn't notice her if she walked past them by the Starbucks down in Palm Beach.

[00:03:07] As a follow-up to that, I thought it was really interesting that when President-elect Trump went to visit President Biden and there were only two other people in the Oval Office in that meeting, and one of them was Susie Wiles.

[00:03:22] And if that doesn't speak to where the hell she is now in her political life, it's amazing to me.

[00:03:29] It's a heck of an arc, you all know, and as probably the readers of the piece know and others since then, she worked in the White House as a scheduler for Ronald Reagan in his first term way back when.

[00:03:40] Her journey to this point is both a remarkable one, it's also one through which I think we can chart the evolution of the Republican Party over the last half a century.

[00:03:51] She goes back to starting her work in politics with Jack Kemp when he was in Congress, and then the Reagan White House finds her way down to Jacksonville, and now here she is really at the top of the world of political operatives.

[00:04:06] Mike Cruz, welcome back. I think Mike and I, a lot of us, all three of Mike's, were watching that night when he just diffusely just said, this is the woman, she is responsible for my victory.

[00:04:18] That was a stunning statement by President Trump to say that he gave her that much credit.

[00:04:25] Picking up from there, President Trump, he's a tough manager, he goes through folks.

[00:04:30] We saw that in his first term. Many analysts predicted that she would suffer that fate as when she first signed on.

[00:04:40] Now, we all remember that after the DeSantis debacle, she started working on his PAC and then slowly behind the scenes worked with it.

[00:04:47] A lot of people predicted that she wouldn't last.

[00:04:50] How do you think that she survived that when he has that history of being tough on campaign managers, being tough on chief of staff, just being a tough boss, both in his political life, but everything we've heard he's been pretty tough on in his business as well.

[00:05:08] A tough boss, particularly in that role.

[00:05:14] Susie's not 32 years old.

[00:05:18] Obviously, she's got a high amount of energy.

[00:05:20] She's been with him now in this capacity, in essence, chief of staff for almost four years.

[00:05:27] Why has she been in that position for four years?

[00:05:30] And why could she last longer than I think some people think she might last in the role to come?

[00:05:35] I mean, a wide array of reasons, starting with what we just discussed, her allergy to the spotlight, something that is important to her boss.

[00:05:50] But also, and more psychologically, something that, of course, coursed throughout the profile that I wrote last spring.

[00:06:00] She's had nothing but experience in the course of her life dealing with difficult-to-manage big personality, having flawed and famous men.

[00:06:09] First, her father, now Donald Trump.

[00:06:11] And so, how does one manage a man like that?

[00:06:16] How does one help guide a man like that, but also understand the limitations of what can be done, but also what can't be done?

[00:06:26] Being not sanguine about that, but being clear out about that.

[00:06:29] And that is one thing that I've found myself thinking of late over these last few weeks.

[00:06:35] What came across to me in my conversations with Susie herself, but also with many others around her, was the level to which she is clear-eyed.

[00:06:46] She knows that she could be let go tomorrow.

[00:06:50] Probably won't happen for a number of reasons, but knows that this is something that happens if you're in the orbit of Donald Trump.

[00:06:59] She knows that ultimately, he's probably going to do more or less what he wants to do.

[00:07:08] But working within those constraints, I think she has a way better than anybody who has been around him in anything remotely like her role for now, what, almost a decade.

[00:07:22] She understands better than anybody how to ride those waves, manage the ebbs and the flows, take the mood swings, but push back in certain ways at certain times.

[00:07:33] I think it's as much an art as a science, but I think it's fair to say the evidence suggests that she has figured that out or understands that better than any of her predecessors.

[00:07:46] Yeah, I think that all three of us, Mike's have watched her from afar, but in this case, they have been a team for the last, particularly the last four years.

[00:07:56] And she understands him.

[00:07:57] He understands her.

[00:07:59] And as Mike talked about when he came out on stage, that was that to all of us, the three of us that knew her, one, that was stunning.

[00:08:10] And that wasn't the last time in front of a group that he gave her the accolades for doing that.

[00:08:17] So I think the three of us would probably think that I personally, I will say from that, I think one, she understands him.

[00:08:24] I think there's a loyalty there.

[00:08:26] I think that she, they both know they've got four years together.

[00:08:31] And I think that during this time now, it would transition, but she's, the three of us know when it comes to strategy, Susie's pretty good at it.

[00:08:40] She's damn good at it.

[00:08:41] And she understands that she also understands her boss.

[00:08:44] We saw that in Jacksonville with John Payton or John Delaney.

[00:08:48] I saw it when, how she helped Rick Scott become governor.

[00:08:52] She understands where, what her strengths are and she's damn good at it.

[00:08:57] I honestly believe that she'll be there for four years.

[00:08:59] I really do.

[00:09:01] She has a way of engendering loyalty.

[00:09:03] As you all know, she has a way of cultivating and taking care of loyalty relationships.

[00:09:09] And I think she's, yes, done that with the Trump family, but also the extended Trump family or what's become the extended sort of Trump political family.

[00:09:16] She also has brought her own, to some extent, political family.

[00:09:20] And I want to be careful.

[00:09:22] I don't want to say things that I haven't, that I don't know from my own reporting.

[00:09:27] I haven't followed the Susie story, the Trump transition as a reporter.

[00:09:33] What I know is from my reporting around Susie earlier and also just what I read, what anybody can read.

[00:09:40] But she, from afar, I have a sense at least that she has done some version or even a heightened version of what she always at least tried to do, which is create relationships and leverage those relationships to her advantage and to the advantage of her principle as well.

[00:09:59] At least that's how she would, I think, want to see it.

[00:10:02] And both those things can work in concert.

[00:10:04] They need not be mutually exclusive.

[00:10:05] When she, first time in his campaign, she was in charge of Florida and Iowa.

[00:10:11] She had a team she put together when he first ran.

[00:10:14] When she went to help just save the Sanzas, save him, she had that same team that went with her.

[00:10:21] And then when the 20 election, when she was in charge of Florida, which she delivered for him, that team was there.

[00:10:28] So I have no doubt that she put together that team, but they also understood their role and how they were going to play in that.

[00:10:34] But I think it goes back, greatest strategy, focus, discipline, and she expects that from everybody else around her.

[00:10:42] As we all know, Washington politics is a blood sport and the chief of staff has got to be, if not the toughest job other than being the president, it certainly has to be right up there with whatever that other job would be.

[00:10:55] Susie is going to need to keep the confidence not only of the president-elect, but also of the staff around him.

[00:11:02] And this is something I wondered about.

[00:11:05] One of the things, and I think my colleagues will agree with me about Susie, is that Susie needs to know that she is in charge of whatever job she has been given.

[00:11:15] With that, I found it rather curious when President-elect Trump named Stephen Miller as the deputy chief of staff.

[00:11:26] And the reason for that is not just because Stephen Miller, of course, was extremely impactful during the first term of Trump, but he's already told people what he wants to do if Trump won.

[00:11:40] My question is this, though, to you, Mr. Cruz.

[00:11:44] Being assigned that position, is Susie going to be able to control Stephen Miller?

[00:11:49] Normally a deputy to any high position has to report to the person they report to and not go over their head or go around them in order to get access, and in this case, to the Oval Office.

[00:12:03] Do you think there's going to be any friction there or any possible friction coming up if Stephen Miller decides that he's going to go and visit the president without either telling her or whether or not she gives her permission to do so?

[00:12:19] Donald Trump is still Donald Trump.

[00:12:21] Susie Wiles knows that she can't control him.

[00:12:24] In fact, Susie knows that she can't, and I don't think she really wants to control, if that's the word, anybody.

[00:12:35] It's not quite that simple, right?

[00:12:37] There's a...

[00:12:42] Yeah, and not even anywhere close to 100% of the time.

[00:12:45] Just enough of the time, right?

[00:12:47] Knows the task, knows the enormity and the complexity, the difficulty of the task.

[00:12:53] He's pretty good at the task, but he's not perfect at the task, obviously.

[00:12:57] And it's partly because of the man for whom she works.

[00:13:01] And for that matter, the job she's about to step into, which is even more high profile than what she's been doing for the last almost four years.

[00:13:09] Essentially, what she will be doing in the White House is merely a continuation of what she's been doing since very early in 2021.

[00:13:16] It's just now that she'll...

[00:13:18] Now she'll be doing it with that title in that building.

[00:13:22] So that alone is...

[00:13:23] Makes it different.

[00:13:24] But in all other respects, I think it's just...

[00:13:28] It's more or less a continuation of a role that clearly she's performed capably, to say the least,

[00:13:37] considering she's played this role for as long as she has.

[00:13:41] They had four years to get to know each other and understand each other and all that, which makes a big difference.

[00:13:48] She's a great observer of her principles.

[00:13:51] All three of us have watched her in Jacksonville.

[00:13:54] Of course, that's a much smaller little pool than what she is now.

[00:13:57] But as you reported, we've all said she is absolutely fantastic, what she does and how she does it.

[00:14:05] Michael, right after the election, a couple of days after the election, Susie appeared on a Miami news show called This Week in South Florida.

[00:14:14] And during that appearance, one of the things she said that I caught was that in the campaign, they made a conscious decision not to worry about traditional Republicans,

[00:14:28] but to go after brand new voters that had never voted maybe Republican, different kind of groups, Latino, more redneck white guys.

[00:14:40] And it makes me want, she said, and she also said, the old traditional Republican party is no longer able to elect anybody.

[00:14:51] And I'm wondering, and I know you have to speculate, but Hightower's an old traditional Republican.

[00:14:59] Where do people, if that's true, where do people like Hightower and others like him, where do they go as a party?

[00:15:07] What is a political force anymore? Are they obsolete? Is Hightower obsolete?

[00:15:15] That's pretty offensive for me.

[00:15:18] That the answer question for him.

[00:15:21] Thank you, Michael Cruz. I'm glad I know that. I was wondering, I do know where you live, Mike Talbert.

[00:15:30] To the question, though, I think she, as we now can see quite savvily, along with others, of course, in the Trump campaign,

[00:15:43] staked success or failure on this notion that there were new kinds of people to turn out in what I'm not sure now we should call the Republican coalition.

[00:15:54] It's the Trump coalition because it's something materially different than what used to be a winning GOP coalition.

[00:16:02] You are stealing from people.

[00:16:05] You are stealing from people.

[00:16:05] Stealing is maybe not the right word, but you are moving people out of what traditionally were or what literally were Democrat columns or what Democrats figured would be D columns or people who, if not for Trump, might not be voters at all.

[00:16:27] Like the creation of a, in some sense, quite different electorate.

[00:16:33] And you take just enough of that different electorate that you've created on purpose, doing some things, some changing up strategies.

[00:16:49] You are reelected president.

[00:16:53] In many ways, it's like a fascinating development.

[00:16:57] And then, oh, even before the reelection of Trump, often heard myself saying to people, if nothing else, what Donald Trump in his unexpected, idiosyncratic, unique to him style has created voters, has increased civic participation.

[00:17:20] Yeah, I don't think that's how everybody looks at it.

[00:17:22] But there is a way in which he's brought into the fold unlikely citizens who are now voters, at least when he's on the ballot.

[00:17:31] That will be one of the questions I think that we'll all have going forward.

[00:17:36] Whenever we have an election, a presidential election, in which Donald Trump is not on the ballot, will those people continue to be voters?

[00:17:42] Because if they do continue to be voters, that's a lasting, on the long list of ways in which Donald Trump will have lasting influence on our country, on our world, on our body politic, on our electorate.

[00:17:53] That certainly is one of the more interesting ones to me.

[00:17:56] The creation of voters.

[00:17:58] People who just would not have been engaged.

[00:17:59] And as much as the Republican Party is going through this metamorphosis, if you will, the Democrats are going to have to go through a lot of changes themselves if they want to stay viable or if they want to become viable again after 2020 or 2024, rather.

[00:18:14] They lost a good portion of their core.

[00:18:17] And I haven't heard from any Democrat yet since the election, which has only been a week or so away.

[00:18:23] But I haven't heard any Democrat say, this is what we need to do to get those people back into the fold.

[00:18:29] The only person I've heard from that has any inkling of what they're talking about as far as going forward is the former congressman from Illinois.

[00:18:38] And he started his own thing of country first.

[00:18:41] And I think that that's at least he's speaking out to those disenfranchised people, both in the R's and D's, and saying, we got to put together here a platform if we're ever going to get away from this Trumpian Republican Party.

[00:18:54] But I'm not hearing any Democrats do it.

[00:18:56] Maybe you, Mike Hightower, the future of the Democratic Party.

[00:18:59] You can't beat somebody with nobody.

[00:19:01] And I just think that he is going to look.

[00:19:04] He built this coalition.

[00:19:05] He built this realignment.

[00:19:07] I think that you're going to see that realignment and people.

[00:19:12] He's going to stay in touch with it.

[00:19:13] And I, one, believe that if he begins to, and I do believe I'm an optimist, I believe that he knows this coalition that he's put together.

[00:19:24] It's his reputation.

[00:19:25] He gave him his word.

[00:19:27] And I honestly believe it's, this is just me.

[00:19:30] I honestly believe that when the midterm elections come and he is half, half successful of what he said he was going to do.

[00:19:38] I will believe that he will break, he will go against tradition and his party will stay in power.

[00:19:44] The question I think he's going to be facing in 2026 is the consequences of those actions.

[00:19:51] And I don't think anybody really knows what the consequences are going to be.

[00:19:57] Do you really think that there aren't going to be consequences if we ended up deporting 10 million people, which is the number that they've talked about, or getting rid of the entire Department of Education with Pell Grants and all of the other aspects that go into the national education program?

[00:20:15] What are the consequences of that going to be?

[00:20:18] And I think that's going to be a determining factor for 2026, not whether or not Trump is on the ticket or not.

[00:20:26] Here's my observation.

[00:20:27] And I'll let Mike, the two, Mike Cruz and Mike Colbert think.

[00:20:31] There's no question when you go through elections, you have all these things you're going to do.

[00:20:36] What I have watched and observed and been a part of is when you take those at first hundred days, you take the low hanging fruit.

[00:20:45] No, all the things that you've said.

[00:20:47] I'm not sure all those are his first priorities.

[00:20:49] I think he's going to do the big ones, the low hanging fruit.

[00:20:52] And then I think Mike Colbert has been successful at helping candidates when they got half or what they were doing when it come to reelection that you advocate and let everybody know all the good stuff you did.

[00:21:04] And give me another couple a year or two and I'll get the rest of it done.

[00:21:08] Excuse me, but my only comment is I'm glad I'm not having Thanksgiving lunch with you two.

[00:21:12] Guys, I'm just, I think it's going to be okay.

[00:21:15] I really do.

[00:21:16] But I'd be interested in Mike, Mike Cruz though.

[00:21:19] You've watched this for years.

[00:21:20] That's that first two years is tough.

[00:21:23] He's going to have, it's going to be tough on him.

[00:21:26] Just quickly, just Donald Trump in the course of his time as involved in electoral politics has changed in interesting and meaningful ways.

[00:21:34] It's the makeup of the math of this country.

[00:21:37] At the same time, like I think you do need to remember that it changed what 275,000 votes in those same three states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

[00:21:49] We have a different president.

[00:21:51] Yes, he won the popular vote.

[00:21:53] She, of course, did not do in 2020 and did not do in 2016, but barely.

[00:21:56] It's not some huge shift in like how divided this country is.

[00:22:02] So I guess what I'm saying is it won't take too many people in too many places changing their minds to have what amounts to as an electoral repudiation in 2026.

[00:22:15] As my only sort of note of caution for, you know, where we might be headed, I have no idea how this is going to go.

[00:22:21] If past this prologue, it's going to be quite chaotic.

[00:22:24] Lots of putting a lot of pressure on members of Congress.

[00:22:27] I don't know that it will go smoothly because if it does go smoothly, it would be quite a departure from basically anything we've watched in the life of Donald Trump and not just political life of Donald Trump.

[00:22:37] Before we get out of here, one question I have for you, Mr. Cruz.

[00:22:41] What's going on with hanging chads?

[00:22:42] When's it going to be published?

[00:22:43] I put it on hold to get through the election, but back at it.

[00:22:47] It's no published date just yet, but hang tight for the hanging chads.

[00:22:51] Okay.

[00:22:52] People who didn't see the first episode we did with Michael Cruz, he's writing a new book based on the 2020, pardon me, the 2000 election of the hanging chads.

[00:23:01] So looking forward to that.

[00:23:02] 25 years ago, right?

[00:23:03] It's amazing.

[00:23:04] It's amazing.

[00:23:05] It really is.

[00:23:05] Thank you, Michael Cruz, for being with us.

[00:23:07] Appreciate it very much.

[00:23:09] Terrific.

[00:23:09] Take care.

[00:23:10] Thank you all for joining us.

[00:23:11] Of course, as always, Mike's on Mike is brought to you by the Jacksonville History Center.

[00:23:15] Our thanks to Alan Bliss and the fine donors who keep the lights on and the cameras rolling.

[00:23:20] We'll see you again next week.

[00:23:21] Take care.

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