Inside the war between Ron DeSantis and Trump’s formidable new chief of staff Susie Wiles

Susie Wiles is credited with saving DeSantis’s floundering 2018 campaign for governor in Florida

Ron DeSantis once hailed Susie Wiles as “the best in the business.”

Donald Trump’s incoming White House Chief of Staff is credited with saving DeSantis’s floundering 2018 campaign for governor in Florida.

“Smartest thing you’ve ever done,” Trump told DeSantis, Politico reported in 2019, referring to his hiring of Wiles, according to a source who witnessed the exchange.

Trump pictured with Susie Wiles in West Palm Beach on Election night (AP)

But the relationship between the Florida governor and Wiles deteriorated once he was riding high post-election and she was ousted from his administration and, for a while, Trump’s 2020 campaign.

“This guy really hates you!” Trump said to Wiles privately, according to a source privy to the conversation, the New York Times reported.

“The only person who ever really had a problem with her is Ron DeSantis,” the newspaper quoted another source.

Rewind to 2015 when Trump first met Wiles during the Republican presidential primary. She became the co-chair of Trump’s 2016 Florida campaign on the recommendation of then-Governor Rick Scott.

Wiles, 66, with an apparent track record of backing the right horse, was hired by Scott to run his 2010 gubernatorial race, which he was expected to lose – but he won.

Ron DeSantis reportedly urged the Trump campaign to oust Wiles (AP)

In 2016, Trump was not projected to win the then-swing state of Florida, but he did after bringing Wiles on board. And she did the same again for DeSantis in 2018.

Following the victory, DeSantis – who dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Trump in January – asked Wiles to help steer the ship through his transition in Tallahassee, appointing her chairwoman of his political committee.

But relations between Wiles and DeSantis began to fracture and eventually broke down. Speculation over why ranges from Wiles taking “too much credit” for DeSantis’s victory, speaking “too freely” to reporters and another concern that she was “too close” to her former client, Scott, according to the Times.

There was also allegedly tension between Wiles and some of DeSantis’s most inner circle – including his wife Casey DeSantis, and his chief of staff Shane Strum. One Republican lobbyist told Politico that Strum and Wiles’s relationship had “been poisoned.” They both denied this to the outlet.

Wiles is now Trump’s chief of staff (Reuters)

Meanwhile, as Trump was gearing up towards the 2020 election, he rehired Wiles to run his campaign in Florida – over DeSantis’s alleged objections.

Tensions boiled over in September 2019 when a memo Wiles wrote in January that year leaked and was published in the Tampa Bay Times. Wiles was accused of leaking it, which she denies.

“It is the governor’s desire to fund-raise and maintain a high political profile at all times inside and outside of Florida,” the memo said. The leak also included details of how energy lobbyists paid thousands of dollars to play golf with the governor.

DeSantis was reportedly furious and urged the Trump campaign to oust her, Politico reported at the time. Trump’s campaign obliged, severing ties with Wiles, leaving them without a top adviser in a battleground state ahead of the 2020 election.

Allies came to her defense and said she was not “disloyal” and wouldn’t leak. “If anyone thinks it’s a leak by Susie Wiles, they’re dumb,” Curt Anderson, an adviser to Scott, told Politico.

Trump is building his new top team having won the US election convincingly (Getty Images)

Wiles was also pressured to leave the lobbying firm she had worked at for years in Jacksonville – Ballard Partners  – run by Brian Ballard, a fundraiser for DeSantis and Trump.

She officially left for health reasons, but one friend of Wiles told The Independent she was “really down at that point – at the very bottom”, and that leaving presented an existential crisis for her.

Her departure was a major upset among Trump’s team. “Losing Susie Wiles is unfortunate and it’s also dangerous. Susie is like a battle-tested field general,” Michael Caputo, a former 2016 Trump campaign adviser, told Politico at the time.

“Very few people understand statewide Florida politics for an outsider candidate like Susie Wiles does,” Caputo said. “I know the president has deep appreciation for her magical touch in the state.”

That magic touch is what motivated Trump to ask Wiles to return the following summer. The Trump campaign announced her return on Twitter and pledged Trump would “win Florida again.”

Trump did win in Florida in 2020, but he lost the election to Joe Biden.

Wiles helped propel Trump to victory for a second time in this year’s presidential race against Kamala Harris. And she has been rewarded by being named as hisChief 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 this week.

“It is a well deserved honor to have Susie as the first-ever female Chief of Staff in United States history,” he said. “I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”

While the campaign will be celebrating this weekend, it has likely not escaped Wiles that the president-elect went through four White House Chiefs of Staff during his first administration.