The Daily Blast: Trump Press Sec Goes Off Rails as Susie Wiles Fiasco Takes Worse Turn

The DSR Network

Chris Cotnoir

Government

4.5 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles gave numerous interviews to Vanity Fair that were way too candid about, well, everything. That prompted press secretary Karoline Leavitt to offer some rancid spin: She went full cult in praise of Trump. She dissembled lamely about “fake news.” And she raged at the publication for not including enough of Trump advisers’ praise for him—as if it’s obliged to do that! We think Wiles’ most interesting revelation was her open admission that Trump’s prosecutions are indeed about “retribution.” Zeteo reporter Asawin Suebsaeng has a piece out today reporting on a new turn in this saga: That confession will complicate Trump’s prosecution of enemies, because it gives them ammo to show that his targeting of them is vindictive. We talked to Suebsaeng about the damage this will do to Trump’s corrupt prosecutions, why Leavitt and others praise Trump so obsequiously at difficult moments, and what all this says about our slide into authoritarianism. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.4	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:32.8	As you've heard by now, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles gave 11 interviews to Vanity Fair in which she was way too candid about, well, everything.
0:37.2	To our mind, though, the most interesting thing
0:39.7	she did was to admit that Trump's prosecutions are about retribution against enemies.
0:45.6	We think this gets at a bigger story, which is that this entire effort on Trump's part is just
0:51.1	falling apart. And it's happened with astonishing speed. On top of that,
0:57.0	what Susie Wiles just said is surely going to make it even harder for Trump to carry out his
1:02.1	lawless efforts to jail his opponents. And right on cue, White House Press Secretary Caroline
1:07.9	Levitt went full cult in response, making the whole spectacle even uglier.
1:14.3	Aswan Sub-Sang, a political reporter for Ziteo, has a new piece coming out today explaining all this,
1:20.3	so we're talking to him about the implosion of those prosecutorial efforts.
1:24.4	Swin, always good to have you on, man.
1:26.9	It is always a pledge to be here to talk to you about
1:29.4	America's ongoing democratic backsliding. It is lurching backwards at a furious rate, and so we had
1:35.7	Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, saying in these interviews that she had reached a loose
1:41.3	agreement with Trump early on for him to stop going after opponents with law enforcement.
1:46.7	Now, clearly, that didn't work too well.
1:49.4	Wiles also admitted that what Trump is really up to with these prosecutions is clear.
1:55.2	Quote, in some cases, it may look like retribution, she said.
1:59.8	And then, even more directly, she allowed that the prosecution of New York Attorney General Lettisha James did seem like retribution.
2:07.0	Swin, there you have the chief of staff in the White House, all but admitting that Trump's prosecutions are not rooted in the law.
	...

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