Vanity Fair writer Chris Whipple stood 10 toes down on the validity and accuracy of his interviews with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, saying all of his conversations come with receipts.
“It’s on tape, as is every assertion that Susie made. And as you know, I interviewed the inner circle as well,” Whipple told Anderson Cooper during a Wednesday appearance on CNN. “I talked to JD Vance, I talked to Marco Rubio, 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.”
In a two-part written piece for Vanity Fair on Monday, Whipple published the revelations that came out of his series of interviews with Wiles that took place over the course of 11 months. In the 11 hours’ worth of audio, Wiles opened up to Whipple about Donald Trump’s “score settling” tactics with political enemies, called Elon Musk an “avowed ketamine user” and said Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality,” among other things.
On Monday, Wiles took to X to call Whipple’s writeup a “disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”
But Whipple stands by his work, stating every word from their chats are “scrupulously in context.”
“And I got to tell you: the giveaway when you’re a journalist and you hear the target, the subject, saying, talking about things like context and omissions, you’re on the right track because there isn’t a single fact or a single assertion that they’ve challenged in the piece,” Whipple said. “It really reminds me of the Watergate days when Ben Bradlee talked about non-denial denials. This is the ultimate non-denial.”
Still, the president’s camp has rallied around in support of Wiles, while Whipple pointed out Trump’s acknowledgement of Wiles’ criticisms.
“It’s not very often that you get an endorsement of your quotation from the president,” Whipple said, while noting that there will be no third installment of the interview. “He evidently wears that as a badge of honor.”
