Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff, has breast cancer, Trump says

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles at a meeting with President Donald Trump in 2025. Photo / Demetrius Freeman, Washington Post

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff and a longtime confidante of US President Donald Trump, has been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer, the President announced Monday.

“She’s going to be in great shape. The prognosis there is excellent, beyond excellent,” Trump said, sitting next to Wiles, 68, at a news conference. She will continue to work while she receives treatment, he said in an earlier statement.

Wiles, a longtime Florida-based political strategist, helped Trump win the state in 2016, a key pickup in his successful bid for the White House that year. After Trump lost the 2020 election and seethed about his diminished political fortunes, Wiles managed his victorious 2024 presidential campaign and has served as his chief of staff since January 2025.

Wiles has told colleagues that she plans to remain closely involved in her work while undergoing treatment, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private remarks. She is helping shape the White House political strategy before this year’s midterm elections, encouraging officials to focus on affordability and other messages with bipartisan appeal.

Wiles recently helped install a new senior official to oversee health agencies’ day-to-day operations in an effort to focus on priorities such as drug price cuts and tamp down controversies around vaccines and other issues.

“During the treatment period, she will be spending virtually full time at the White House, which makes me, as President, very happy!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Wiles has described her role as empowering Trump’s agenda, rather than serving as a check on his impulses, a break from some past chiefs of staff who have said that their most important role was saying no to the nation’s leader.

She has also described Trump as having “an alcoholic’s personality,” saying he “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” among several comments that were published in a pair of Vanity Fair articles that drew national attention last year.

White House officials quickly defended her, and Wiles said that the articles took her comments out of context. Trump said she had done a “fantastic job” and would remain his chief of staff.

Beyond Trump, Wiles has advised or managed the political campaigns of other prominent Republicans, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Rick Scott, of Florida.

She also served as a lobbyist at Ballard Partners, an influential firm that has represented many major corporations with business before the Trump administration. Wiles left Ballard Partners in 2019, citing health issues.

She is a daughter of Pat Summerall, a former football player and TV announcer.

Wiles’ announcement comes as some healthcare advocates have warned that the Trump administration’s efforts to tighten federal spending on healthcare, such as by declining to extend some Affordable Care Act subsidies last year, could harm access to preventive cancer screenings.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers last year introduced a Bill to eliminate co-pays and out-of-pocket costs associated with breast cancer diagnostic tests. The legislation has been stalled in Congress.

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