Revelations from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in a series of remarkably unguarded interviews with Vanity Fair caused quite a stir today. Among the key tidbits were Wiles directly contradicting the official administration line when she said that Trump’s real goal in striking alleged drug boats in the Caribbean is indeed regime change in Venezuela, not the so-called “war on drugs”. She also said that Trump was “wrong” to tie former president Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activity. And while she doesn’t think Trump is on a retribution tour, she conceded that the case of Letitia James “might be the one retribution”. “When there’s an opportunity [for score settling], he will go for it,” she said of the president.

Also in those interviews, Wiles said that Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality”; JD Vance “has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and his conversion to Trumpism was “sort of political” when he was running for the Senate; and attorney general Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” her early handling of the Epstein files.

There were also striking comments about Elon Musk’s ketamine use and his dismantling of USAID, the latter of which Wiles said left her “initially aghast”. Wiles also disclosed that she had warned Trump against pardoning the most violent participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and pressed him to delay his decision on sweeping trade tariffs, but was unable to change his mind in either case. “The tariff decision has been more painful than I expected,” she said.

Naturally, Wiles slammed the Vanity Fair stories as a “disingenuously framed hit piece”, claiming that a lot of what she said was taken out of context. Meanwhile members of the Trump administration, including Vance and Bondi, presented a united front, rallying around her on social media to express their support and vouch for her loyalty.

Trump has also reportedly stood by Wiles. He told the New York Post that he has a “possessive and addictive type personality” and didn’t take offence at her choice of words. “I didn’t read it, but I don’t read Vanity Fair — but she’s done a fantastic job,” he said. “I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.”

Elsewhere, Pete Hegseth said the defense department will not publicly release unedited video of the controversial 2 September double-tap boat strike that killed two survivors from an earlier attack on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean. “Of course we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth said. He said members of the House and Senate armed services committees would be allowed to review the footage; however, he made no commitment to sharing it with the full Congress, despite a defense policy bill calling for its release.

Unemployment climbed to 4.6% in November, the highest it’s been in almost four years, and the economy gained 64,000 jobs that month after losing 105,000 in October amid the federal government shutdown, according to delayed figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And on that note, Trump will be giving a national address from the White House at 9pm ET tomorrow. According to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the president will be talking “about all of his historic accomplishments over the past year” and possibly “teasing some policy that will be coming in the new year as well”. There’s still time to clear your diary.