Marine One lifts-off after returning President Donald J. Trump to Mar-a-Lago Friday, March 29, 2019, following his visit to the 143-mile Herbert Hoover Dike near Canal Point, Fla., that surrounds Lake Okeechobee. The visit was part of an infrastructure inspection of the dike, which is part of the Kissimmee-Okeechobee Everglades system, and reduces impacts of flooding for areas of south Florida. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
Donald Trump’s campaign manager and now Chief of Staff to the President-elect of the United States is Susie Wiles, a long-time Florida-based political consultant who has worked with Trump since the 2016 campaign. In The Spectator, Freddy Gray discusses Wiles, writing:
“Susie Wiles is a great choice for President Trump’s chief of staff,” said Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and the man Donald Trump so humiliated in 2016.
Bush’s approval of the second Trump administration’s first major appointment instantly rang alarm bells in some quarters of the new American right.
Wiles, who ran Trump’s campaign with Chris LaCivita, is seen by some Trump insiders as a suspiciously old-fashioned operative, in hock to the moneyed interests who used to run the Republican Party. There were whispers of clashes between Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s most doggedly loyal aide and his 2016 campaign manager, and Wiles and LaCivita over funding in the summer.
But Wiles is not some secret agent for NeverTrumpism. She worked on the Trump campaign in 2016, for starters, and she been quietly instrumental in Trump’s revival over the last four years. Her elevation now signals that Team Trump now wants to head towards a more harmonious Republican future. It also suggests that the future of America is all about Florida, baby.
Florida is, increasingly, where the center of the Republican Party’s gravity sits, and the Donald’s club in Mar-a-Lago is the Trumpian equivalent of the Palace of Versailles.
Not so long ago, Florida was a key battleground state in American elections. Barack Obama won there narrowly in 2008 and by a whisker in 2012. Yet the advent of Trumpism has turned the Sunshine State into a Republican stronghold. On Tuesday, Trump triumphed in Florida with a sizable 13 percent majority.
Wiles, a mild-mannered Episcopalian whose manners and politics are more moderate than some in the Trump sphere, has been a key figure in this transformation. A longtime Floridian operative — hence Jeb’s backing — she understands the Floridian power dynamics better than anyone.
She was a key player in rise of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, but then fell out with Team Ron after becoming embroiled in a complicated power struggle involving Casey, the governor’s wife. The DeSantis family felt that Wiles, with her support for Trump, was getting in the way of their ever greater ambitions. So they pushed her out.
But that ended badly for DeSantis and well for Donald Trump, as Wiles helped Trump destroy DeSantis in the Republican primaries and then take the White House.
Wiles once wrote that her specialty is making “order out of chaos.” That presumably makes her invaluable to Trump, whose instinctive and transactional approach to the business of politics can create havoc. Moreover, in her understanding of Florida, Wiles has a unique insight into the coming reality of American politics.
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