Vice President JD Vance is “a conspiracy theorist.” Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, isn’t merely a zealot; he’s a “right-wing absolute zealot.” And President Trump governs with an “alcoholic’s personality.”
Ever since the publication last week of a two-part article in Vanity Fair in which Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, said all of that and more, political observers have been asking: Why did she do it? Why discard her usual discretion and speak so frankly, on the record, about her cracked compatriots in the Trump administration?
It’s a great question, but it’s not the most important one, which is this: Why does she do it? I’m referring not to the interview but to her job. If she can see the incoherence, immoderation and instability all around her, why abet it?
To both questions, the answer — or at least one of the answers — is surely the same. Wiles has been given a plum part in history (not to mention a history-making part, in that she’s the first woman in her role). She relishes that, enough to want recognition, enough to consent to 11 interviews with the journalist Chris Whipple, enough to position herself during those conversations as the even-keeled sage appraising everyone around her. How fitting that Whipple’s portrait of her appeared in a publication named Vanity Fair.
“I don’t ever seek attention,” she told Whipple at one point, a statement that’s a laugh line, though it’s unclear whether Whipple saw it that way and it’s obvious that Wiles didn’t. I repeat: 11 interviews. Over the course of nearly a year. She spoke to Whipple on Sundays, after going to church. She spoke to him while she was doing laundry. She left an Oval Office meeting early to go speak with him. The Garbo of the West Wing, she’s not.
The first year of Trump’s return to the White House has shown or reminded us of many things, including the fragility of democracy, the prevalence of cowardice and the intensity of tribalism. But it has been an especially stark and galling education in the intoxication of power.
And Wiles is a more illuminating entry on that syllabus than other senior administration officials, who wear their vainglory so conspicuously it might as well be a sandwich board spelling out their attachment to their entourages, to their letterheads, to the pomp and the perks. Many of them — Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel — lack the credentials to be given anything remotely resembling such high-ranking jobs by anyone other than a destructionist like Trump, and they’re surely too thrilled by their outrageous fortune to gaze skeptically at any uncomely aspect of it. Besides which, those three, along with other presidential aides and advisers, are as rapacious, reckless and altogether rotten as Trump.
But Wiles is different. She’s a seasoned political pro who has often, relative to others in her line of work, kept to the background. She doesn’t take to social media to advertise her every brain spasm as some eureka insight and raptly monitor the odometer of likes and shares. She had prominent political assignments before Trump and could have significant political roles independent of him. And she has never come across as an ardent ideologue, so dedicated to certain policy aims that all manner of compromise in their service would be OK.
But when Trump beckoned her to join him as he returned to the White House, she came. She came despite her awareness of how quickly he’d cycled through chiefs of staff and other senior aides during his previous term. She came despite knowing — as does any sensate creature even casually observing America over the past decade — how vicious and volatile he can be. She came with eyes open to his biases, having worked on all three of his presidential campaigns. Briefing Whipple on Trump’s tropisms, she observed: “He’s said it a million times — ‘I judge people by their genes.’” That nugget drew less notice than the digs at Vance and Vought. But it’s a doozy, especially given Trump’s frequent rants about immigration and I.Q.
Whipple’s portrait of her suggests that she is in many ways ideologically simpatico with Trump and genuinely believes that he has done good. She acknowledges excesses and sloppiness — regarding tariffs, deportations and more — but says that sometimes, to restore balance, you must yank things hard in the direction opposite from where they stand. She seems to hold some cabinet members in high regard; her favorites inexplicably include Kennedy, whom she refers to as “my Bobby.” The “my” fascinates. Like posing for glamour shots in a celebrity-centric magazine, it challenges her reputation for self-effacement.
But that sort of reputation can be as deliberate as any other. To be known as the humble deckhand who steadies an otherwise rocky ship is nonetheless to be known; to be seen as someone who doesn’t insist on getting credit is to get an especially flattering kind of credit. She described for Whipple how she sits far to the side during televised Oval Office gatherings, so she’s off camera. But isn’t she edging her way back into the shot by telling Whipple that?
Wiles is certainly no Hegseth, showily doing push-ups with the troops; no Patel, with his premature expectorations; no Kristi Noem, zipping down to El Salvador for a macabre photo op. But she’s also human, with an itch to make sure that her presence and her sway at the pinnacle of power don’t go unnoticed, unrecorded, underappreciated.
Even someone like Wiles savors the air up there. Even if it’s toxic with conspiracy theories and zealotry.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Wall Street Journal, Jason Gay rued the effect of “repeated, granular slow-mo video forensics,” a.k.a. obsessive replays, on the determination of what, in pro football, constitutes a catch. “It’s the affliction of overthinking: If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, wait, hold on, it must be a chandelier,” he wrote. “It’s further evidence humans can ruin the spirit of anything, if given the time and technology.” (Thanks to Bill Sclafani of Rockport, Mass., for nominating this.)
Gay also marveled at the return of the quarterback Philip Rivers, 44, who’d retired and was coaching high school football, to replace an injured starter for the Indianapolis Colts in their recent game against the Seattle Seahawks (which the Colts lost): “He threw longer passes that wobbled and shorter passes that coughed and sputtered before reaching their receivers. In the pocket he moved like a man trying to make a sandwich in the dark.” (Jeffery B. Morris, Blue Springs, Mo., and Anita Moran, Titusville, Fla., among others)
In The Athletic, Mike Sando nonetheless saluted Rivers, a “jowly 44-year-old grandfather five years removed from his last game” who “led a go-ahead drive in the final minutes at Seattle as his Indianapolis Colts nearly pulled an upset for the aged.” (Bill Williams, Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Also in The Athletic, Will Leitch noted that while losing or frustrated teams have always sought to blame anyone but themselves, “I’m not sure it has ever quite been institutionalized the way it is in college football right now. It feels like the entire sport is constantly demanding to talk to the manager.” (Tony Foley, La Grange, Ill.)
In The New Yorker, Helen Rosner named the filet o’tofu sandwich at Mommy Pai’s in Manhattan as a 2025 restaurant highlight: “As the name of this sandwich suggests, it bears some structural similarities to a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, but only in the sense that we human beings share more than half our DNA with a banana.” (Andrew Pinkowitz, Manhattan)
On Defector, Liz Cook dismissed 1587 Prime, a Kansas City steakhouse affiliated with the star Kansas City Chiefs football players Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, as a culinary theater of pointlessly expensive overkill: “The leather-backed menus are enormous — perilous. Manipulating them at a small table covered with expensive glassware made me feel like a horse on roller skates.” About that glassware: The stem of the vessel used for a signature $22 cocktail, the Alchemy, is wrapped in steel wool that is briefly ignited, a flourish accorded some of the food, too. “There are at least two employees whose main job appears to be setting things on fire,” Cook wrote. And, in the case of the Alchemy, for naught: “The drink tasted like a cosmo someone had strained through a French vanilla Yankee Candle.” You really should treat yourself to the whole review. (Anthony Munns, St. Louis)
In Wired, David Ferry introduced one of the main subjects of his article about people with Parkinson’s disease: “Amy Lindberg spent 26 years in the Navy and she still walked like it — with intention, like her chin had someplace to be. But around 2017, her right foot stopped following orders.” (Michael Miller, Hopkinton, Mass.)
In The National Post, Allen Abel pondered one of Canada’s stubborn failings: “Homelessness in this country as 2025 concludes is a public catastrophe composed of tens of thousands of private collapses. It is big-city and it is small-town. It is pharmaceutical, and it is macroeconomic. There are no answers, and many answers. There are initiatives, institutions, jurisdictions, community forums, police incursions, devoted volunteers, Christian pieties, tent cities, dung heaps, tiny houses, bulldozers, needles scattered like fescue seeds, and no end of free shoes and soup.” (Lucinda Chodan, Montreal)
In her newsletter, Stacey Patton recognized the humiliation of the Trump administration’s repeated failures to convince a grand jury of its case against Letitia James: “In federal court, a prosecutor not getting an indictment is like a chef burning cereal.” (Dawn Moss, Lawrenceville, Ga.)
In The Times, Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer also mused about Trump’s troubles prosecuting his perceived enemies: “Revenge, it turns out, is a dish best served with evidence.” (Niki Vettel, Winthrop, Mass., and Steve Pfarrer, Northampton, Mass., among others)
Also in The Times, Wesley Morris charted the career evolution of Liam Neeson, once known for roles with a touch of tenderness: “This century, he turned to armed action, and the warmth in his face has narrowed into a forever scowl. You can all but see a receding care line.” (Brett Lewis, Madison, N.J., and Karen Westrell, Happy Valley, Ore., among others)
And Bret Stephens summarized a year of Trump, the length of his sentence befitting the magnitude of this president’s offenses to decency and democracy: “Right now, in every grotesque social media post; in every cabinet meeting devoted, North Korea-like, to adulating him; in every executive-order-signing ceremony intended to make him appear like a Chinese emperor; in every fawning reference to all the peace he’s supposedly brought the world; in every Neronic enlargement of the White House’s East Wing; in every classless dig at his predecessor; in every shady deal his family is striking to enrich itself; in every White House gathering of tech billionaires paying him court (in the literal senses of both ‘pay’ and ‘court’); in every visiting foreign leader who learns to abase himself to avoid some capricious tariff or other punishment — in all this and more, our standards as a nation are being debased, our manners barbarized.” (Benjamin Diamond, Washington, and Chris Totten, Sliven, Bulgaria, among others)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
What I’m Watching and Writing
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In 2022, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, who were then engaged (and are now married), received their first Oscar nominations, for their supporting performances in “The Power of the Dog.” If there were any justice, they’d get hers-and-his nods again this Oscar cycle. She does exquisitely subtle and ultimately heartbreaking work in the otherwise spotty “Roofman”; the article by the Times critic Wesley Morris that I mentioned earlier in this newsletter has a section about her that nails her genius. And in the messy but sporadically mesmerizing “Bugonia,” which Wesley also dissects, Plemons does the impossible: He outshines his co-star, Emma Stone, who’s predictably superb. Oscar oddsmakers aren’t too hopeful for Dunst or Plemons, but I was very glad, despite reservations about “Roofman” and “Bugonia,” to savor the couple’s latest — and, for my money, best — work.
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Speaking of exceptional performances, Josh O’Connor makes the most of his lead role in “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” which is already streaming on Netflix. He plays a young priest with violence in his past but virtue in his heart, and while much of the movie is a deliberately and entertainingly over-the-top affair, O’Connor nails the nuances of a carefully written part. “Wake Up Dead Man” folds Trump-era political allegory and wickedly funny set pieces into its compulsory whodunit, which the mischievous sleuth Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) of course solves. But densely packed and intricately wrought as it is, did it have to be nearly two hours and 30 minutes long? Several scenes went on forever, and I felt somewhat beaten down by the end.
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Over the past month I’ve done several installments of the Times Opinion feature The Conversation with my colleague Bret Stephens that I haven’t yet mentioned in this newsletter. Here’s one from Nov. 20, another from Nov. 27 and another from Dec. 4, in which our editor, Aaron Retica, joined us. Bret and I will resume our discussions next year.
On a Personal Note
The family members I’ve loved and lost are never far for me, but they always seem closest during holidays. Thanksgiving comes; I close my eyes and see my mother whirling maniacally through the kitchen, intent on overwhelming her guests with the bounty and variety of her spread. Christmas brings back Grandma Bruni and her passion for ornaments and rituals.
Nothing captured her theatrical personality like her crèche. I don’t mean one of those delicate tabletop arrangements of figurines. Grandma’s tableau took up much of her front lawn in White Plains, N.Y., where Mary, Joseph, the wise men and the rest of the plaster-of-Paris entourage were more than half life-size. They were placed there as early as late November, hanging out in and around a wood shack that Grandpa Bruni reassembled every year. And for several weeks, they waited, incomplete, because, as I wrote in my 2009 memoir “Born Round”:
Something was missing: baby Jesus, who was perhaps three-quarters life size. He would stay missing — metaphorically in utero, though technically in a bottom drawer of Grandma’s bedroom dresser — until just before the midnight moment when Christmas Eve became Christmas Day. Grandma held to this pinpoint schedule as if indisputable historical accuracy were at stake and White Plains were in the same time zone as ancient Bethlehem. At 11:58 p.m. on Dec. 24 — two minutes before the Christ child’s birth — she would dim the lights. She would put on a record of Dean Martin or someone like him singing “Silent Night.” And she would fetch baby Jesus from that dresser drawer, where he lay swaddled in the finest white linens Grandma owned. She’d cradle him in her arms, carry him out to the shack on the front lawn and put him in his manger, nestled between Mary and Joseph. And she would cry.
Some four decades later, I’m amazed we all stayed up that late. I doubt my siblings and I will even try this year. But whenever we do turn in, it will be with Grandma and Grandpa Bruni in our thoughts and with all our absent family members in our hearts, which swell during this season, when the greatest gift is the vividness of memories.
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