White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is exiting the White House, President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Friday.
Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — a Trump loyalist, longtime political adviser and shaper of the president’s immigration policies — will take over on Monday, Trump said. Wiles will move over to the Trump political operation, he added.
The move marks a shake-up in Trump’s top advisers and comes after the historic midterm election earlier this week, which saw Democrats take control of both the House and the Senate.
As he departed the White House on Friday, Trump told reporters that he “wanted to make a change” with his chief of staff, adding that Wiles had done a good job.
But sources tell ABC News that Trump was privately blaming Wiles for his midterm’s losses. Once that became clear, sources said Wiles made the decision to submit her resignation, which she did Thursday night.
Wiles confirmed that Friday would be her last day in the position in a statement on social media, saying that serving in her role “has been the honor of a lifetime.”
“While my role may be changing, my commitment to the President and the mission never will,” Wiles wrote.
Wiles was the first person that Trump named to his White House staff following his 2024 election victory, becoming the first female White House chief of staff.
“Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns,” Trump said in a statement at the time appointing her to the position.
As questions previously swirled about Wiles’s future in the administration, President Trump came to her defense as recently as three weeks ago.
“Susie is here, and she’s going to be here for a long time,” Trump said in October.
She was a key ally to the president as he sought to orchestrate his return to office in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss that resulted in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Wiles, who served as campaign manager for the entirety of Trump’s 2024 run, was known for running a tight ship and staying away from the spotlight and social media.
A Florida native, Wiles was a longtime powerful Republican adviser for years, and was credited with helping elect the likes of Florida’s Sen. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis back in 2018, but was later pushed out of the governor’s orbit in 2019. Wiles later found herself in the inner-circle of Trump — who went on to defeat DeSantis in the battle for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election.
As chief of staff, Wiles continued to be an inconspicuous, albeit powerful, figure in the White House — continuing to stay out of the spotlight and speaking infrequently to the media.
In 2025, Wiles sat for a series of 11 interviews with the magazine Vanity Fair — her only in-depth interview — in which she opened up about the first year of Trump’s second term, offering unreserved descriptions of top figures in the administration. In one exchange, according to Vanity Fair, she noted that the president has an “alcoholic’s personality” — a comment that Trump later defended, though he has repeatedly said he doesn’t drink alcohol.
In the interviews, Vanity Fair reported that Wiles noted that there had been a few times where she has been “outvoted” in the administration, and cited Trump’s Day 1 pardons of Jan. 6 rioters as an example, though she noted that eventually she “sort of got on board.”
Wiles told the magazine that Trump had time to think about what he wanted to do before returning to office a second time, giving her the opportunity to pick her battles.
“So no, I’m not an enabler. I’m also not a bitch. I try to be thoughtful about what I even engage in,” she said at the time. “I guess time will tell whether I’ve been effective.”
Wiles battled breast cancer while at the White House, saying in March that she was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer; in September she shared she was cancer-free.
Who is Stephen Miller?
Miller, an immigration hard-liner, has worked as one of Trump’s top advisers, including as his deputy chief of staff during the president’s second term in office.
Miller played a key role in Trump’s first administration, crafting immigration policies — including those that resulted in thousands of families being separated at the border.
After leaving the first Trump administration in 2021, Miller became the head of America First Legal, which described itself as the conservative answer to the American Civil Liberties Union.
America First Legal took the Biden administration to court several times over immigration policy, notching a win when a federal judge struck down a program known as “Keeping Families Together” that would have provided temporary relief from deportation for undocumented spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens by allowing them to apply for legal status without having to leave the country.
America First Legal was also among many groups listed as part of Project 2025, a blue-print for a Republican presidency that generated controversy on the campaign trail and became a target of Democratic criticism. Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 and America First Legal sought to be removed from the website’s list of advisory board members.
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