Susie Wiles, the president’s chief of staff, has denied the billionaire touted as ‘the real vice-president’ a permanent office in the heart of the White House
www.thetimes.com
Wiles, 67, wasted no time laying down the law to the new president’s staff, making it clear that “anyone who cannot be counted on to be collaborative and focused on our shared goals isn’t working in the West Wing”. She has warned that she does not welcome “people who want to work solo or be a star”.
This meant she faced an early challenge to quieten talk of Musk as a “co-president” or the “real vice-president” instead of JD Vance, given the entrepreneur’s tendency to grab headlines and promote his own agenda and allies.
Musk, 53, has a key role in Trump’s second term as head of the new cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and is said to have been angling for his own office within yards of the Oval Office. Musk’s senior leadership team are to be based in the Eisenhower executive office building, which is in the White House grounds but a short walk away across a road from the main complex.
His chief of staff remained poker-faced but this marked a significant victory. There was relief among long-term Trump backers on the West Wing staff who resent Musk’s rapid ascent after declaring his support only last summer.
There was another sign of Wiles’s determination to put some distance between Musk and Trump in the executive order setting up Doge, which stated that its chief administrator must report to her.
Nobody knows better than Wiles, with her long experience of managing men with big egos, just how hard it will be to restrain Musk, who continues to make frequent visits to the West Wing. However, her moves this week asserted her role as gatekeeper to the president, even for the world’s richest man, who has been omnipresent at Trump’s side after moving himself into Mar-a-Lago at the end of last year.
