Politico’s Bombshell Report About Trump Mulling Susie Wiles Replacement Triggered ‘Freakout’ by Prez

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump reportedly “blew up” after being handed a Politico report questioning the future of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, triggering what multiple people inside Trump’s orbit described as a “freakout.”

Trump aide Natalie Harp printed a copy of Thursday’s Playbook and gave it to the president, according to two people familiar with the episode cited by Politico Friday.

The story reported that Trump had privately sounded out allies about replacing Wiles.

Three people familiar, however, described the resulting reaction to Playbook’s bombshell as a “freakout,” with Trump said to have “blew up” over another round of negative headlines surrounding his chief of staff. Wiles and her allies, meanwhile, were reportedly “burn[ing] up phones around town” to contain the fallout.

Trump subsequently made additional calls to allies about Wiles after reading the report, according to a person with direct knowledge.

Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton has now joined the list of names being floated in Trumpworld as a possible replacement, Politico added.

The fresh turmoil follows reporting that Trump has discussed a range of potential successors, including Stephen Miller, Randy Levine, Steve Witkoff, Bill Pulte and Kevin McCarthy.

Wiles has reportedly faced renewed scrutiny over people in her political orbit doing business overseas, including her daughter Katie Wiles and longtime Trump advisers James Blair and Chris LaCivita.

Katie Wiles is a partner at Continental Strategy, which signed a $35,000-a-month contract connected to Republika Srpska, the semi-autonomous Bosnian Serb entity. The firm has said she did not lobby U.S. officials on its behalf.

“The White House is in a state of panic. Susie is looking over her shoulder, trying to solicit people to go out and say good things about her and her team and make it seem like everything is fine. It’s not,” one person close to Trump told Playbook on Friday.

The White House fiercely denied the account, with spokesperson Danielle Alvarez telling Politico on Friday:

What an unbelievably stupid and false claim from yet another anonymous ‘source.’ The so-called ‘reporting’ leads with President Trump directly refuting their ‘sources’ and Politico embarrassed itself by running the story anyway. Nobody read the story and freaked out because, frankly, nobody reads Politico in the first place. To quote the greatest President in American history — FAKE NEWS POLITICO!

Trump himself had already publicly dismissed the original reporting as “TOTAL FAKE NEWS.”

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