Trump Selects Corporate Lobbyist Susie Wiles as Chief of Staff

According to a press statement, President-elect Donald Trump has selected his campaign manager Susie Wiles to serve as his chief of staff. Wiles will be the first woman to serve as chief of staff. 

“Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns,” Trump said in the statement this evening announcing his selection. “Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again.”

Until earlier this year, Susie Wiles was a lobbyist for tobacco company Swisher International, for which she worked to influence Congress on “FDA regulations,” according to disclosures filed with the Senate. Wiles has not filed a termination report for her work with Swisher, but she has not reported lobbying for the company since the first quarter of the year, when the company paid her firm Mercury Public Affairs $30,000 in fees. 

Before joining Mercury Public Affairs as a co-chair in February 2022, Wiles was a lobbyist for Ballard Partners, the firm founded by Trump ally and campaign bundler Brian Ballard. There she worked as a lobbyist for coal company Alliance Resource Partners, insurance company Bankers Financial Corporation, General Motors, marketing company Zeta Global, transportation company Origin Logistics, and more companies. 

Trump has worked to cultivate a populist image, in the past running on a pledge to “drain the swamp” and promising to end the revolving door and tax Wall Street. Before he left office in 2021, he reversed his own executive order that would have barred his appointees from any lobbying related to their agencies for five years. 

One of the Trump campaign’s consistent messages to voters was that a Trump administration would “Make America Healthy Again,” with campaign figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledging to get ultra-processed foods removed from school lunches. Mercury has large lobbying contracts with several junk food companies that will be working to oppose that objective. It lobbies for sugar cereal company Kellogg’s, high fructose corn syrup sauce maker Kraft-Heinz, and Nestlé SA, the Swiss company whose brands include KitKat, Hot Pockets, and Nestea. 

Wiles maintained her position with Mercury Public Affairs throughout the course of the Trump campaign, and still held the position as of yesterday.

Some of Mercury’s other clients, highlighted on its website, include Gilead Sciences, Pfizer, Tesla, Uber, Kaiser Permanente, AT&T, NBC Universal, Gavi: The Vaccine Alliance, and the nation of Qatar. It’s registered federal lobbying clients include ConAgra, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Archer Daniels Midland, Exxon Mobil, Alibaba, Emergent BioSolutions, and dozens more.