Trump screamed at Susie Wiles and banished her from the Oval Office. As the door slammed, he was still yelling: The 72 hours that destroyed the president’s beloved chief of staff… and her Camp David plot to deceive him

Donald Trump flew to Florida without her.

In just 72 hours, the most powerful woman in Trump’s Washington lost everything she spent four years building.

Susie Wiles, 69, was the last person Trump, 80, talked to before he made up his mind about anything that mattered. It took three days to end that, and he did it in front of his staff.

Wiles walked out of the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon with the president still shouting at her.

Trump had turned on his chief of staff in a meeting with other aides and berated her over the brutal outcome for Republicans in the midterm elections, four sources familiar with the argument told the Daily Mail. By that night she had resigned. Her replacement, Stephen Miller, will take over on Monday.

Wiles, who was quietly plotting a post-midterms exit strategy as first reported by the Daily Mail over the summer, asked to stay until February, two sources told the Daily Mail. The president ruled against it.

‘He exploded at her,’ one source close to the president said.

He yelled at her over the losses until she left the room, a White House source said. Two other sources put it harder, saying Trump threw her out of the meeting.

‘He told her to leave,’ another source familiar added.

White House Deputy Chief Dan Scavino was in the room. So was Morgan Dewitt-Snow, a close Wiles ally who runs the White House personnel office. 

Dewitt-Snow emerged visibly rattled, a source said. She did not go back to her desk, and instead went to hunker down with Wiles elsewhere in the West Wing.

A White House official denied that Trump raised his voice at Wiles: ‘He would never yell at Susie.’ 

On election night two days earlier, Trump had watched the House and then the Senate fall to the Democrats from his private residence, barely speaking, with Wiles sitting beside him. She was the one person still next to him while donors and senior White House officials were already blaming her by name.

Wiles had been warned she was about to be fired, a fourth source said. She went to see Trump on Thursday night and quit before he could do it.

Trump did not accept it on the spot, according to a White House official.

He told her they would talk about it later, and he still had not answered by Friday morning. She walked back into the Oval Office and told him it had to be done.

What she had asked for was a transition running to February. Trump did not want to wait that long, two sources said, and her last day was Friday.

‘She’s tired,’ the White House official said. ‘She didn’t want to keep fighting.’

A source close to the president called that a bald-faced lie, and said the proof was sitting on the schedule for this weekend. 

Wiles had booked an offsite at Camp David for Saturday, a day when Trump would be in Florida, the source said. The invitation list included White House officials and aides loyal to her.

The purpose was supposedly to work out how she would survive the week and stay in power, two sources told the Daily Mail. The trip was delayed and is now canceled.

Her other project this week was scapegoating Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, sources say.

Wiles’s allies spent the days after Tuesday night’s drubbing trying to make Hegseth the public reason Republicans lost so badly, blaming his role in leading the Iran war, which has spiked the cost of living, three sources told the Daily Mail.  

Trump himself acknowledged that the war cost the GOP and helped usher in a ‘bluenami’, saying voters ‘weren’t willing to deal with the short term consequence of paying more for gasoline.’ 

‘Susie was trying to push out Pete’ to shift blame for the midterm disaster, a senior Pentagon official said. 

But over the last few days, Trump was told more than once by close advisers that his chief of staff’s team were leaking to the press about Hegseth to pull attention off of her, a source close to the president said.

‘I think eventually enough people talked to him that he got very upset,’ the source said.

A flurry of headlines emerged immediately after the midterms about Trump’s supposed anger at Hegseth, as he solicited advice from his close advisors about whether to fire him. 

A former Trump official put the charge more bluntly. ‘Susie Wiles is a leaker, she’s a huge f***ing leaker,’ he said.

For her critics, the case against her was about money. Wiles ran a political operation that burned through close to half a billion dollars and lost both chambers, a senior Trump administration official said.

She had also been promising a win. As recently as six weeks before the election she was telling people directly that Republicans would take the midterms, a source told the Daily Mail.

By Friday afternoon, celebrations at the news of Wiles’s ouster were in full swing just a few blocks from the White House. 

A former Trump official, who now works at a downtown Washington lobbying firm, said the whole office was celebrating: ‘And I will continue celebrating through the weekend.’

‘I think we were all kind of done with the craziness, and the self-serve, the self-dealing and the corruption, which we all saw.’

Her defenders tell a different story.

‘A lot of people love her, a lot of people hate her,’ a senior Trump administration official said. ‘The people that hate her are many of the individuals that want to just do crazy s*** and get away with it.’

Wiles filtered what reached the president, the official said, and that filter is what her enemies resented. She had served at Trump’s side since 2016 and had been his chief of staff the last two years after masterminding the 2024 comeback that saw him return to the White House by winning all seven battleground states.

The Daily Mail has contacted the White House, the Pentagon and representatives for Wiles for comment. 

Trump announced her replacement on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday. 

Stephen Miller, 41,  Wiles’s deputy and the architect of the administration’s tough immigration crackdown, takes over on Monday. Wiles ‘has done an outstanding job’ and will be ‘moving over to the Trump Political Operation,’ the president wrote.

Moments later, Wiles posted that Friday was her last day. ‘Serving President Trump in the White House has been the honor of a lifetime,’ she wrote.

A former Trump official said his support for Miller is now conditional on a wider White House purge. The source does not expect the administration’s problems to be solved if Wiles’s people stay in the building.

‘It’s like a weed,’ he said. ‘Pull one weed and 10 more pop up in its place.’

As for what finally moved the president to screaming fury at the woman he once trusted more than anyone, the former official pointed at the leaks in recent days and at Trump’s own screen time.

‘He’s perpetually online,’ the source said. ‘So my guess is he saw some things that needed to change.’

Wiles had been arguing internally for a narrower deportation policy, limiting removals to people convicted of violent crimes or wanted for them, a source familiar with the deliberations said.

She had told colleagues that the mass deportation operation was costing Republicans votes. On Friday, Trump handed her job to the man who built that operation. 

‘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.’

The same official pushed back on the idea that Miller arrives owing anyone. Secretary of State Marco Rubio serves as national security adviser and Miller as homeland security adviser, and the two work closely.

But, said the official: ‘I don’t know that I would say Stephen is a Marco or a JD [Vance] guy. I think he’s kind of his own man … I don’t know that he has a declared alliance, I think he’s focused on serving the president.’

New Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, and staunch Trump ally and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, were both weighed as Wiles replacements first along with hardliner Bill Pulte, one of Trump’s closest aides. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor made clear he was available for the top job as well.

In the end, Trump settled on his longest serving aide, Miller, who has been him with since the 2016 election, because he vowed to help bring an end to the Iran war.

‘I think Susie’s done a very good job, great job,’ the President told reporters at the White House on Friday. 

On the South Lawn, a reporter asked how it felt to lose the election. Trump turned and walked toward his waiting helicopter to depart for Florida.

Climbing aboard with him were Rubio, his close aide Natalie Harp and Miller. Wiles was nowhere to be seen.