Vanity Fair contributor Chris Whipple on CNN on December 16, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via CNN / YouTube)
Vanity Fair writer Chris Whipple — who authored a bombshell profile on White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — told CNN that the White House should know better than to deny the facts of his article.
“Everything in the article was on the record, Whipple told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “I recorded every interview.”
Several disgruntled staffers in President Donald Trump's administration are now complaining about Whipple’s Vanity Fair piece. Wiles remarked that Trump had an "alcoholic's personality," that Vice President JD Vance was a "conspiracy theorist," and she called Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought a "zealot." She also confirmed that Trump uses the Department of Justice against his own personal enemies, and said Attorney General Pam Bondi "completely whiffed" on the matter of the Epstein files. Unnamed staffers told Politico that Wiles revelations were “extremely demoralizing.”
Whipple said it was astonishing the extent to which Wiles “was unguarded and freewheeling on the record all the time,” but he said “everything was scrupulously in context.”
“And I got to tell you, the giveaway, when you're a journalist and you hear you're the target, the subject saying talking about things like ‘context’ and ‘omissions,’ you know, you're on the right track because there isn't a single fact or a single assertion that they've challenged in the piece.”
Cooper mentioned Wiles’ denial of saying that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk – whose Department of Government Efficiency rampaged through the federal workforce earlier this year — is an "avowed" ketamine user and that Whipple played a tape for the New York Times confirming her quote.
“It's on tape, as is every assertion that Susie made,” Whipple said. “… I interviewed the inner circle as well. I talked to J.D. Vance, I talked to Marco Rubio, [advisor] Stephen Miller and others. All of it taped all of it on the record. And the giveaway is that they haven't been able to challenge a single fact.”
Watch the segment below:
- YouTube youtu.be
