by Stefano Vaccara
NEW YORK (UNITED STATES) (ITALPRESS) – The explosive interview granted by Susie Wiles at Vanity Fair is not read as a leak of news, nor as an excess of frankness, nor as the naivety of a chief of staff to the first weapons that has trusted too much of a journalist. On the contrary, everything lets think of a calculated, political and strategic move, orchestrated by one of the most experienced figures of the Republican establishment – in all probability with the full consent of his boss, Donald Trump. Wiles is not a novice of power.
He is a navigated lobbyist, a political leader with decades of experience in Washington. She worked at the White House during the Reagan administration, she grew professionally in the shadow of James Baker and knew closely the mechanisms of power even under George H. W. Bush. He knows how the hierarchies work, knows the value of loyalty and above all masters timing. Nothing in this interview seems improvised. That is why the steps dedicated to Vice-President JD Vance is particularly significant.
Speaking with Vanity Fair, Wiles describes the conversion of Trump’s critical Vance to the faithful of the MAGA movement as “in part political”, a definition that sounds like a delegitimation. Even harder is the other statement: Vance, Wiles says, was “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.” This is not about random observations. In Washington, this type of phrases, officially pronounced and open microphone, are warning signals.
In the profile that emerges from the interview, Vance does not appear as a possible heir or a strategic partner, but as a performer. Not by chance, the same Vice-President states that Wiles’ task is not “check” Trump, but “facilitate his vision and make it reality”.
The implied message is clear: Vance must align, not maneuver. This point becomes crucial in the light of the vice president’s silences in recent months, especially in the most delicate moments for Trump, beginning with the Epstein case. In a system of power like that trumpet, silence is not neutrality: it is suspicious. And the suspect is correct.
The interview seems to serve exactly this. While Wiles hits hard down – Vance, Elon Musk, ideological figures like Russell Vought – Trump, paradoxically, comes out strengthened. Even the most discussed phrase, the one in which Wiles defines Trump as endowed with “an alcoholic personality” (when it is known that he drinks only diet coke), sounds more like a description of his sense of omnipotence than as a direct attack. One way to say that the president feels capable of everything, invulnerable, dominant.
Defects of an aspiring dictator? But when ever, if anything all essential character traits in the MAGA world to be recognized as the Commander-in-chief. It is no coincidence that after the interview, Trump reiterated that he had “full trust” in Wiles. No distance, no denial, no furious reaction.
In fact, while Bannon for such an interview was immediately removed in 2017, Wiles remains in place. Read in this key, Vanity Fair’s interview appears less like a journalistic scoop and more like a carefully calibrated political warning. A message addressed above all to JD Vance and anyone who cultivates premature ambitions, to remember that, under Trump, succession games are not tolerated. Trump has always been able to use the media as a power tool, since he was a New York building looking for attention.
This interview is perfectly part of that tradition: give the appearance of saying too much, but striking selectively and without the head having to expose itself in person. Judging by subsequent signals, JD Vance seems to have understood the intimidating message. The vice president’s servile tone was quick. Immediate alignment. And this, more than anything, suggests the move worked. And this, more than anything, suggests the move worked.
Tonight Trump on TV will talk to the nation to claim his alleged economic “successes”. It remains to be seen if, between the lines, it will launch new signals to whom, perhaps, began too early to imagine as its possible successor.
-Photo IPA Agency-
(ITALPRESS).
