President Donald Trump climbed aboard a helicopter on the South Lawn on Friday bound for Florida.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, aide Natalie Harp and Stephen Miller went with him. Susie Wiles, his chief of staff for the past two years, was nowhere in sight.
Hours earlier, Trump had named Miller, 41, as her successor on Truth Social. Miller, who served as Wiles’s deputy and built the administration’s immigration crackdown, starts Monday.
The shake-up came three days after Republicans lost the House and the Senate.
Four sources told the Daily Mail that the fallout reached a peak Thursday afternoon, when Trump, 80, confronted Wiles, 69, in front of other aides in the Oval Office.
“He exploded at her,” one source close to the president said. Another source familiar with the exchange said: “He told her to leave.”
A White House source said Trump kept yelling until she left, and two other sources said he ordered her out.
A White House official rejected that version. “He would never yell at Susie,” the official said.
Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino sat in on the meeting. So did Morgan Dewitt-Snow, who runs the White House personnel office and is close to Wiles.
A source said Dewitt-Snow walked out visibly rattled and went to find Wiles elsewhere in the West Wing rather than return to her own desk.
Wiles had reason to expect trouble. A fourth source said someone warned her she was about to be fired. She went to Trump on Thursday night and resigned first.
According to a White House official, Trump did not accept the resignation on the spot. He told her they would revisit it, and by Friday morning he still had not responded.
Wiles went back to the Oval Office and told him the matter needed to be settled.
She asked for a transition lasting until February, two sources told the Daily Mail. Trump wanted her out sooner, and Friday became her last day.
The White House official described her state of mind this way: “She’s tired. She didn’t want to keep fighting.”
A source close to the president called that explanation a lie. The source pointed to Wiles’s weekend calendar, which included a Saturday offsite at Camp David while Trump was in Florida.
The invitations went to White House officials and aides loyal to her. Two sources said the gathering was meant to plan how she would stay in power through the week.
Staff delayed the trip, and it is now canceled.
Wiles’s allies also turned their attention to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after Tuesday’s results, three sources said.
They tried to cast his leadership role in the Iran war, which has raised living costs, as the main reason for the losses. A senior Pentagon official said, “Susie was trying to push out Pete.”
Trump has tied the war to the outcome himself. He used the word “bluenami” and said voters “weren’t willing to deal with the short term consequence of paying more for gasoline.”
Advisers told the president more than once that Wiles’s team was leaking against Hegseth to pull attention from her, a source close to Trump said.
“I think eventually enough people talked to him that he got very upset,” the source said.
Her critics focused on spending. A senior administration official said the political operation she ran consumed close to half a billion dollars and lost both chambers.
A source told the Daily Mail that Wiles had been telling people six weeks before the election that Republicans would win the midterms.
Her supporters pushed back. “A lot of people love her, a lot of people hate her,” a senior administration official said.
That official said Wiles controlled what reached the president’s desk, and her critics resented it.
She has been at Trump’s side since 2016. She became chief of staff after she directed the 2024 campaign that swept all seven battleground states.
In his announcement, Trump wrote that Wiles “has done an outstanding job” and is “moving over to the Trump Political Operation,”
Wiles posted shortly afterward that Friday was her last day. “Serving President Trump in the White House has been the honor of a lifetime,” she wrote.
Immigration policy formed another thread.
A source familiar with the deliberations said Wiles pushed internally to limit deportations to people convicted of violent crimes or wanted for them.
She told colleagues the mass deportation campaign was costing Republicans votes.
Trump gave her job to the man who designed that campaign.
“I don’t know that there is anyone to the right of Stephen Miller on immigration,” a Trump official at the State Department said. “The guys who deport people are going to be excited.”
Trump considered Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Bill Pulte before choosing Miller.
Ambassador to India Sergio Gor also signaled he was available. Miller, Trump’s longest-serving aide, has worked with him since the 2016 election.
Trump picked him because he vowed to help end the Iran war.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Trump said, “I think Susie’s done a very good job, great job.” On the South Lawn, a reporter asked how it felt to lose the election.
Trump turned and walked to his helicopter.
The Daily Mail has contacted the White House, the Pentagon and representatives for Wiles for comment.
