Tag: susie wiles
Markwayne Mullin

Mullin Promoting Ex-Highway Patrol Officer (And Oklahoma Crony) To Run ICE

President Donald Trump's chief of staff was completely "blindsided" by a top administration nomination that the president announced out of the blue.

The Daily Beast reported Monday that Susie Wiles had no idea that Trump was nominating controversial Richard "Lance" Schroyer to take over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Schroyer, a former Oklahoma State Highway Patrol officer and close friend of Secretary Markwayne Mullin, is already facing backlash, Axios reported. Schroyer has no experience aside from "participating in a 287(g) agreement, a partnership that allows state and local officers to assist ICE with certain enforcement duties."

The Beast reported that Mullin was able to secure his pal as the pick because he personally visited Trump at the White House on a Saturday when Wiles was at the wedding of her daughter. Wiles only found out about Schroyer when it was announced on Truth Social by the president.

“I am very pleased to announce that I have nominated Lance Schroyer to be our next ICE Director,” Trump cheered. “Lance has over 29 YEARS of Law Enforcement experience in Oklahoma.”

A June report also indicated that deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and immigration advisor Tom Homan were both “blindsided” by the announcement. They too didn't know anything about the meeting. At the time, it was reported that there was a "revolt" inside the Department of Homeland Security.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said that the president “has always been the decision maker on who he nominates for vacancies in the Administration.” She called it false that Trump's team was “blindsided by his decision.”

Meanwhile, across Capitol Hill, Schroyer is being mocked because he declared himself a “devoted father” and only a few days later it was discovered that he didn't pay child support for many years. His ex-wife ultimately dropped the case.

Behind the scenes, Schroyer has been working with Republican senators in an effort to secure the job. According to the Axios report, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL.) said Schroyer “seemed like a smart guy.” Others said that they weren't concerned about his lack of experience. Mullin similarly had no experience with managing a massive operation like DHS, much less a budget of over $100 billion.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) explained away Schroyer's inexperience by saying that he also personally had no experience when he was elected as senator.

“Look, what was my experience for being here in the Senate? I think you hire people because they have a great personality, because they’re smart, because they’re quick learners," claimed Moreno.

Trump demanded on Truth Social that the Senate confirm Schroyer immediately, but the formal paperwork didn't get to the Capitol until July 20. Lawmakers famously head back to their districts in August or use it as a vacation month.

A DHS spokesperson said the department was “firmly behind” Schroyer, and that Mullin “urged Lance’s swift confirmation in the U.S. Senate.”

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Musk and Melania

New Book: First Lady Objected To 'Unhinged' Musk Crashing In White House

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book was released Tuesday to the public, and among the revelations about the First Lady is that she didn't want trillionaire Elon Musk anywhere near the White House residence.

The Daily Beast dug through the book, uncovering a story that the tech guru, who promised and failed to reduce government spending by $2 trillion, once needled the president about crashing in the White House. Melania Trump put her foot down, but her husband didn't care. Musk then spent several nights in the Lincoln bedroom, the Daily Beast relayed.

Despite his vast wealth, Musk is known for couch surfing or living out of his offices or factories, as the New York Post reported in 2022.

“Though he also told associates he had taken to using a sleeping bag on the floor of his office in the Eisenhower Building," the book says.

The trillionaire bragged about it to the press, saying, “Sometimes I stay at the White House." He then noted he'd done it “more than once.”

According to Trump's version of events, the two were on Air Force One when Trump asked Musk where he was staying. During Trump's first term, he liked to ask the question to test whether people were staying at his Washington hotel. Musk said he didn't know yet. Trump then invited him to the White House for a private tour.

The Tesla boss said he thought the Lincoln Bedroom was "cool" and swore he never requested it.

Musk aslso praised Trump as a great host.

The First Lady didn't like Musk around and neither did many of the White House staffers, the book said. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles didn't like him much either, feeling he had a "strangeness" to him. He came across as "unhinged."

After Musk left the White House, it was revealed that he may have been using an extensive amount of drugs at the time, some of which are illegal. The New York Times reported in May 2025 that "Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it."

The Times was careful to explain that it was unclear whether Musk was doing all of those drugs while at work in the White House. Musk denies the reporting, saying that he does not use drugs.

Haberman and Swan's new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, is on sale Tuesday.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet


Danziger Draws

Danziger Draws

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at jeffdanziger.com.

White House Chief Of Staff Rips Vance, Musk, Vought -- And Trump's 'Alcoholic Personality'

White House Chief Of Staff Rips Vance, Musk, Vought -- And Trump's 'Alcoholic Personality'

President Donald Trump's former campaign manager and current chief of staff, Susie Wiles left no one untouched speaking to a Vanity Fair reporter

In a new tell-all article, Wiles calls Vice President JD Vance "a conspiracy theorist for a decade."

There has been speculation about Vance's conversion from calling Trump "Hitler" to becoming a fierce defender of the president. Wiles reveals in the interview that Vance has been "sort of political" in his conversion.

Wiles also criticized Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought was the "architect of the notorious Project 2025," the Heritage Foundation plot to radically change the U.S. government from the inside.

According to Wiles, Vought is nothing more than "a right-wing absolute zealot."

Vought was closely involved with the effort to eliminate thousands of federal workers, leading to a brain drain of some of the smartest experts in government, Reuters reported in September.

Vanity Fair asked Wiles about the effort under Elon Musk to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. Toward the end of his time in the White House, Musk confessed he would only able to cut about $150 billion by the end of 2026.

In March, the billionaire argued, in a since-deleted posted, that leaders like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler "didn't murder millions of people. Their public sector workers did."

Wiles said of the statement, “I think that’s when he’s microdosing.”

Wiles remark was in reference to reports of Musk's heavy drug use while working in the White House. In May, the New York Times reported Musk had a daily supply of 20 ketamine pills. He mixed the ketamine with ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms and Adderall, according to the Times.

Wiles said she never had first-hand knowledge of Musk's drug use.

...

At one point during the interview, which involved a number of Trump staff members, Wiles said Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality."

She explained that he “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

Trump's brother, Fred Trump Jr., was an alcoholic, and Trump doesn't drink alcohol at all. However Mary Trump, the president's niece, has said that for the president, "nothing is ever enough."

"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Trump's niece, who has a degree in clinical psychology, said of Trump. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be."

Mary Trump wrote that her grandfather bullied his son, Fred Jr., into alcoholism.

Later in the Vanity Fair report, it explains that Wiles' father "was an absentee father and an alcoholic, and Wiles helped her mother stage interventions to get him into treatment." He finally got sober and stayed there for the 21 years before his 2013 death.

"Alcoholism does bad things to relationships, and so it was with my dad and me,” Wiles said.

“Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say. But high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.” Wiles said.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

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