There will be a hot time in the old town tonight, if it hasn’t commenced already. Ketchup bottles take heed and if your name is Susie Wiles, wear red. What doesn’t hit you directly is liable to splatter all over you. Trump’s chief of staff gave an interview with Vanity Fair wherein she dropped a number of bombshells. But probably the crack about Dry Drunk Donald will land her in the hottest of water — unless of course it’s dismissed as “fake news” like everything else.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has described teetotal Donald Trump as someone with an “alcoholic’s personality.”
Wiles, the usually media-shy top aide whom the president refers to as the “Ice Maiden,” made the remark in a lengthy profile in Vanity Fair.
The top Trump ally said she recognized aspects of the president’s boisterous personality from her alcoholic father—legendary NFL star and broadcaster Pat Summerall, who died in 2013 after being sober for 21 years.
“Some clinical psychologist who knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say,” Wiles said. “But high-functioning alcoholics, or alcoholics in general, have exaggerated personalities when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.”
She added that Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality” and “operates with a view that there’s nothing he can’t do—nothing, zero, nothing.”
Trump does not drink, citing his older brother Fred Jr.’s struggles with alcoholism and his early death in 1981 at the age of 42.
In an August 2024 interview on comedian Theo Von’s podcast, Trump even suggested he could also have fallen into alcohol addiction if he were a drinker, meaning he wouldn’t “have been successful” in life.
Let us examine the syndrome of the dry drunk. It is what it sounds like, a drunk who is behaving like a drunk except without the chemical assistance. It’s a common term in AA circles. If somebody is “sober” that is one thing, meaning that they are chemical-free and also working the 12 steps of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and improving their lives.
If somebody is “dry” that is quite another matter. Dry drunk means that the person in question isn’t imbibing alcohol but is exhibiting all the mannerisms of a practicing alcoholic.
Now let’s get into even odder territory: Trump may not “drink” but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is chemical-free. Long have been the rumors of Adderall usage and other substances in Trump’s case. If that’s the case, then Trump may or may not be “sober” as that term is understood in AA circles. He may in fact be “out there” or “practiciing his disease” and not sober by AA standards.
We don’t know and we’re not liable to find out. Ronny Jackson, a good buddy of Trump’s and someone whose own sobriety has come into question, to say the very least, has been known to make grandiose statements like Trump “could live to be 200” which is clearly ridiculous. But it fits right in with alcoholic hyperbole.
Donald may be on a dry drunk. God knows that makes as much sense as any other explanation I’ve ever heard over the years — if not more — and it is coming from his own chief of staff, and she’s in a position to know, having had an alcoholic father, Pat Summerall.
Trump is as impossible to reason with as any drunk. That we have seen. Let’s see what kinds of explosions come out of D.C. later today when this story finishes going the rounds.
The phrase ‘drunk on power’ comes to mind.
Your “… even odder territory: Trump may not “drink” but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is chemical-free. Long have been the rumors of … chemicals …” deserves a thumbs up! He’s definitely fritzed his what ever it is in his skull. His increasing and extending decline is acquired more so than, and in parallel to, any age related decline in personality and mental faculties. He only has himself to blame.
Sympathies? None!
Alcoholics have better personalities, except for Hegseth.