President Donald Trump said White House chief of staff Susie Wiles would leave his administration on Friday in a major staffing shakeup that comes hot on the heels of a stinging midterm election loss this week.
The president said his longtime adviser and political attack dog Stephen Miller would take Wiles’ place as one of the most powerful figures in his administration — a clear signal about how Trump plans to approach a coming clash with Democrats.
Writing in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, the president said that Miller, whom he called one of his “most trusted advisors,” would become the new chief of staff and that Wiles will move over to the president’s political operation.
“I want to thank her for her service as Chief of Staff,” Trump wrote. “She has done a great job!”
In a statement, Wiles — who has been the president’s chief of staff since the beginning of his second administration — said working with Trump had been the “honor of a lifetime.”
“While my role may be changing, my commitment to the President and the mission never will,” she added.
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It wasn’t immediately clear what role Wiles would take on in the Trump political organization.
CNN reported that Wiles submitted her resignation to Trump on Thursday night.
Miller himself had yet to make any public statement on his new job as of Friday afternoon. But White House spokesperson Steven Cheung called him a “Trump OG” in a post on X.
“There is no bigger advocate for the Trump agenda than Stephen, and he will help the Administration deliver on monumental victories for the rest of this historic second term,” he said.
An adviser to the president since his first term, Miller has garnered a reputation as a fierce political operator willing to push the boundaries of the law to enact Trump’s sweeping agenda.
He was a driving force behind the White House’s aggressive immigration policy, including the administration’s deadly enforcement surge into American cities that saw federal agents kill two US citizens in Minnesota early this year.
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Miller has also been a driving force behind efforts at the White House to crack down on what the Trump administration has framed as left-wing political extremism. He was a chief architect behind a presidential national security memo known as NSPM-7, which laid out the groundwork to designate left-leaning groups as domestic terrorists.
In auditioning for the chief of staff job, Miller reportedly said that the Trump administration needed to focus on winding down the Iran war. The New York Times reported that the senior adviser said the president’s core supporters viewed the conflict as a betrayal.
As White House chief of staff, Miller will have significant power over policy development and legislative interactions with Congress. His ascendancy comes as Democrats promise to use their new majority to deluge Trump and his allies with subpoenas and investigations.
