United States president-elect Donald Trump has made the first official appointment of his incoming administration, announcing 2024 campaign co-chair, Susan Summerall Wiles, as his chief of staff.
The president-elect’s transition team already is vetting a series of candidates ahead of his return to the White House on 20 January 2025.
Many who served under Trump in his first term do not plan to return, though a handful of loyalists are rumoured by US media to be making a comeback. A new group of colleagues also now surrounds the 78-year-old Republican.
There are more than 4,000 positions to be filled across Trump’s cabinet and White House, and across the federal government.
Susie Wiles and campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita were the masterminds behind Trump’s landslide victory over Kamala Harris.
In his victory speech on Wednesday, he called her “the ice maiden” – a reference to her composure – and claimed she “likes to stay in the background”.
Wiles was confirmed the next day as the first appointee of his second term – as his White House chief of staff. She will be the first woman ever to hold that job.
The chief of staff is often a president’s top aide, overseeing daily operations in the White House West Wing and managing the boss’s staff.
Wiles, 67, is considered one of the most feared and respected political operatives in the country.
Less than a year after she started working in politics, she worked on Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign and later became a scheduler in his White House.
In 2010, she turned Rick Scott, a then-businessman with little political experience, into Florida’s governor in just seven months. Scott is now a US senator.
Wiles met Trump during the 2015 Republican presidential primary and she became the co-chair of his Florida campaign, at the time considered a swing state. Trump went on to narrowly defeat Hillary Clinton there in 2016.
Wiles has been commended by Republicans for her ability to command respect and check the big egos of those in Trump’s orbit, which could enable her to impose a sense of order that none of his four previous chiefs of staff could.
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