‘Freewheeling’ Trump aide's trashing of admin stopped reporter cold: 'Lightning striking'

A reporter for Vanity Fair said on Tuesday that he was "astonished" by how a Trump administration official conducted herself during a series of 11 interviews.

Chris Whipple, who published a bombshell report on Trump's Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, and the Trump White House on Tuesday, discussed his reporting on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." He described Wiles's interviews as "unguarded," considering some of the revelations she gave Whipple.

"As a reporter in your career, when lightning struck, and it was astonishing to me the extent to which she was unguarded and freewheeling on the record all the time," Whipple said. "I wrote a book about the Biden White House, where everybody was on deep background requiring approval. Quite the opposite in this case. Susie wiles in 11 interviews over 11 months."

During the interviews, Wiles described OMB Director Russ Vought as a "zealot." She also compared Trump's habits to those of an alcoholic, saying he had an "addictive" personality.

Whipple also pushed back on an assertion Wiles made about the interview, where she claimed that she thought she was off the record.

"She knew I was working on a book at the outset when I told her that Vanity Fair had agreed to do a piece to publish a piece, she was all in and enthusiastic about it," Whipple said.