JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Donald Trump’s second administration is starting off on the best possible footing with the hire of Susie Wiles as chief of staff — putting him in position to create the most optimistic and forward-looking Republican White House since the 1980 election.
There was a time — and it wasn’t too long ago — Wiles wasn’t universally known.
Now?
The northeast-Florida-based strategist has the prominence she’s always deserved.
Wiles has had a career with nothing but successes, guiding Rick Scott to the Florida governor’s mansion long before he made his latest play to lead the Senate, then sherpaing a largely unknown and undefined Ron DeSantis to the same position.
I’ve had a front row seat for both.
But her greatest triumph is the latest one — the major role she had in not just helping get Donald Trump elected president with a popular vote majority few predicted and an Electoral College landslide but ensuring the president-elect’s final campaign was his best one.
The Trump campaign faced cash disadvantages, not to mention a media in the tank for the defeated Democratic nominee. But where it had the ultimate advantage, beyond candidate quality, was in the president-elect’s prescient hires of Chris LaCivita and Wiles.
They were, from beginning to end, the adults in the room.
Wiles dealt with challenges from interlopers inside the tent, including the Trump’s curious decision to let lunatic Laura Loomer onto Trump Force One for trips to the debate with Kamala Harris and a 9/11 memorial ceremony (notable particularly because Loomer thinks the attack on America was an inside job).
That news cycle mercifully ended, and Loomer was banished from the inner circle to whatever adjunct role she’s in today.
Add to that what some call a coup attempt from former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski, brought in by the president for reasons less than strategic. He attempted to subvert campaign leadership and the rigorous and disciplined hierarchy.
Wiles survived that too.
In an alternate world, especially given a media hostile to Trump that fawned over the Harris “joy” narrative that predominated for much of the campaign, either Loomer or Lewandowski could have tanked the Trump operation.
But Wiles — a survivor with a capital S who got her revenge on the Ron DeSantis machine after it left her for dead after the 2018 campaign and has dealt with various personal and health challenges along the way — wasn’t about to be knocked out of her stance by some self-interested meddlers.
Like her dad Pat Summerall, the New York football legend, she knows how to come through in the clutch, taking her adversary’s best shot and emerging stronger through the process, ice in her veins as she makes the game-winning kick.
And just as Pat means “point after touchdown,” Wiles too didn’t leave any points on the field during this campaign.
Her coaching drove a disciplined effort that knocked down the vaunted blue wall not with gimmicks and blitzes but with a war of attrition, a field-position game won a few thousand votes at a time.
And there was no need to find votes in Georgia or anywhere else. The obliteration was such that states like Virginia and New Jersey, which seemed like safe Democratic holds, were competitive and trending toward swing-state territory. And in the final insult to injury, Trump won Coach Walz’s home county.
Wiles was Reagan’s scheduler in 1980, and this time around she’s in a position to do much more than figure out where the only current transformative figure in American politics is going.
She’s going to help figure out where America is going. And she’s not going to look for credit along the way — as evidenced most recently and vividly by her demurral from speaking at Trump’s victory rally this week. While many would have wanted the glory and the spotlight, Wiles’ mind is on business and the long term. She understands political legacy and how to build it.
And as we saw with the election this time around, Trump is on his way to a working-class coalition that spans race, ethnicity and national origin and includes both genders.
Contrary to the idiotic Mark Cuban jibe about how the president-elect can’t handle being around “strong, intelligent women,” Wiles’ elevation to the key policy job in the new and improved Trump White House shows that a strong, intelligent and very capable woman will be making sure the president’s agenda — and that of the American people — is achieved.
And she’s the first female presidential chief of staff.
Those who might not have voted for Trump should have confidence in this hire.
And those who supported him know the president-elect could not have made a better choice — a true loyalist who understands the intersection of politics, policy and national interest.
