Former Trump staffer calls for Wiles to resign over midterm wipeout

Caroline Sunshine, a former staffer to President Trump, on Wednesday called for White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to resign over the massive losses Republicans saw in the midterm elections.

Sunshine told Fox News’s Jesse Watters on “Jesse Watters Primetime” that she was going to say “what a lot of people are saying privately.”

“Susie Wiles needs to resign,” she told Watters, causing the host to raise his eyebrows. “She needs to offer her resignation to the president before he has to ask for it. Her campaign skills have not translated into governing. Susie was behind the historic win in 2024, and she deserved credit for it and got the top job for it.”

The former Trump staffer added that Wiles was now “behind the historic loss where we lost Mississippi and have lost potentially the Senate for six years, and so that cuts both ways.”

The Mississippi Senate race remains tight between Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and Democrat Scott Colom and has not been called by The Hill’s election partner Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). Colom leads Hyde-Smith with 49.04 percent of the vote to her 48.85 percent, according to DDHQ.

Sunshine said Wiles remaining in her role could cost Republicans again in 2028 and that “if she loves and respects the president and his legacy, she’ll do the right thing and step aside.”

“And a lot of this was staff failure, a lot of this was strategy and messaging failure,” Sunshine said. “It’s the chief of staff’s job to manage the staff. … Why wasn’t the staff out messaging?”

Reporting before the midterms suggested Wiles could leave the White House after the midterms. Politico reported last month that Trump had received negative feedback about Wiles from allies, though he called the story “ TOTAL FAKE NEWS ” and said Wiles “has my COMPLETE confidence.”

Trump has also publicly praised Wiles on numerous occasions. After Wiles announced she had been diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, Trump referred to her as “an amazing person” and “an amazing fighter.” Wiles announced in September that she was cancer free .

Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday” that he expects her to leave her post after the midterms, though not because “she’s fallen out of favor with Trump.”

“It’s just a natural sort of time to make that change,” he added.

Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary in Trump’s first term, told MeidasTouch in October that the president was not pleased “with the way things are right now” and had floated replacement ideas to allies. She suggested that he floated the idea of replacing Wiles with the deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an idea Matthews described as “a terrifying prospect .”