Top Trump Official Pulls the Curtain Back on Her ‘Nasty’ Confrontation with DeSantis

Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, offered new insight into her rocky past relationship with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

During an interview on The New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast with columnist Miranda Devine, Wiles revisited her personal history with DeSantis and his team.

Wiles said, she wouldn’t describe her relationship with the Florida governor as having a “falling out,” but noted that things got nasty behind the scenes.

“[His allies] were very nasty to you and tried to really destroy your career,” Devine said.

Wiles said the pre-2024 election tensions were in her “rearview mirror” and praised DeSantis.

“I think he’s governing Florida, which is my home state. He’s a good governor, and whatever personal differences he had or whatever deficiencies he thought I had are long past my thinking about them,” Wiles told Devine.

JUST IN: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles says past personal issues between herself and Gov. Ron DeSantis have been moved on from@MirandaDevine: “They tried to really destroy your career, is that right?”

Susie Wiles: “Yes, that’s right…he’s a good governor. Whatever… pic.twitter.com/rLPGIYgOqf

— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) July 9, 2025

Wiles helped engineer DeSantis’s narrow 2018 gubernatorial victory over Democrat Andrew Gillum, a win that set the stage for Florida’s dramatic political realignment under Republican leadership.

But by the time DeSantis challenged Trump in the 2024 GOP primary, Wiles had aligned herself with Trump, and tensions flared.

Wiles has played a crucial role in multiple Republican victories, but she downplayed her influence on Trump’s successful 2024 campaign.

“It had nothing to do with me,” Wiles said.

“It was the president’s time, and he did the things that a candidate has to do to get through those early primary states,” she added.

“The president had done it before. He knew what was involved. We had an organization, an apparatus that supported him, and frankly, there was never any question that it was going to end up like it did,” she concluded.

DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential run briefly split much of the GOP base, but Republicans ultimately unified behind Trump before for his decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris last November.

The full “Pod Force One” episode is available via The New York Post.

As The Western Journal reported Wednesday, Wiles told Divine during the same podcast that Elon Musk viewed Trump as a sort of father figure before their public feud sparked last month.

The Post columnist commented that Musk “had a sort of fatherly fixation with Donald Trump that I guess inevitably was going to blow up at some point.”

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles opened up to @mirandadevine on the latest episode of “Pod Force One” about President Trump’s “very troublesome” falling out with Elon Musk. Subscribe here: https://t.co/mF1jSbzGLE pic.twitter.com/8b0cdbfjEx

— New York Post (@nypost) July 9, 2025

Wiles did not challenge the categorization of the relationship and concluded, “It was a great thing when it was a great thing, and had a very, I think, a very troublesome ending.”

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