The bombshell Vanity Fair interviews with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles continue to make waves, and now one reporter has been accused of parroting the official Trump administration "spin" on the story.
On Tuesday, Vanity Fair's Chris Whipple published a story comprising 11 months of interviews with Wiles, Donald Trump's chief of staff and co-chair of his 2024 reelection campaign, in which she made several shockingly frank and unflattering comments about figures in the administration. She referred to Trump himself as having an "alcoholic's personality" and operating with "a view that there’s nothing he can’t do." She said Vice President JD Vance has "been a conspiracy theorist for a decade" and only changed his stance from Trump critic to supporter out of a political calculation, rather than a change in principles. She also described businessman and one-time Trump advisor Elon Musk as "an avowed ketamine" user and "an odd, odd duck" whose irrational behavior left her "aghast."
On Wednesday, Rachael Bade, a former Politico reporter, took X with an extensive post outlining damage control efforts within the White House that she had been told about by sources close to the matter. Her post notably depicts figures within the administration as fond of Wiles and unbothered by the comments relayed in the Vanity Fair piece, dismissing them as "cherry picked" and showing a "depth of loyalty" towards her.
"After the VF/WILES bombshell dropped yesterday, a band of Trump allies showed up at the WH unprompted to help do damage control — all out of love for the chief," Bade wrote in her post.
Bade's sources also claimed that Trump was not bothered by the piece after having a conversation with Wiles, with one claiming that the story "doesn't f—— matter" if Trump is fine with her.
"The president and Wiles had a private conversation today, I’m told. And while the details of that one-on-one remain unclear, I hear from others who spoke to him that he was 'unfazed' by the story and said he didn't care," Bade wrote.
Responding to Bade's post, Michael A. Cohen, a former columnist for the Boston Globe, accused her of being gullible and parroting the White House's "spin" on the situation, thereby making her part of the damage control campaign herself.
"It appears that the WH damage control on Susie Wiles, as described in this post, was finding a reporter credulous enough to transcribe their spin on the story," Cohen wrote.
"Bade's not credulous, she's a paid mercenary," sports editor and reporter Rodrigo Azurmendi wrote in response to Cohen's post.
