I Suppose Any Text Message COULD Theoretically Be from Susie Wiles, Right?

There’s something equal parts hilarious and unnerving about the idea that on any given day, a world leader might pick up their smartphone and see a text from a new number, from a person claiming to be one of the Trump administration’s most powerful and influential individuals, and think for even a second that they’re experiencing anything other than an attempt at espionage. I mean honestly, just how often does someone like Emmanuel Macron or Sanae Takaichi glance down at their phone and see an unknown number, with a message like “Hey, Stephen Miller here, new phone, so are you guys working on any top-secret energy projects???”

Merely engaging with this kind of phishing attempt at all feels like a severe security failing that you would think modern cyber security firms would train politicians to avoid at all costs. But letting your phone get hacked to empower such attempts? That’s got to be orders of magnitude worse, right? Thankfully, a serious adult like White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles would never allow such an embarrassing thing to befall her … oh. Whoops?

The latest apparent victim of a Susie Wiles sound-alike? That would be new UK Labour Party Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who reportedly received and engaged with messages from someone impersonating the longtime Donald Trump advisor, according to advisors who spoke to POLITICO. It’s not known when the messages occurred, or what was discussed, although the UK government naturally claims that they spoke only briefly, on matters “of no significance.” Burnham has only been in the post since July 20, after displacing Keir Starmer as the latest in a recent revolving door of British leaders. It is possible, however, that the contact might have occurred in June when it became clear that Burnham would be the front-runner for the position. The whole mini-debacle was kept out of the public eye, only leaking now, and the office of the Prime Minister isn’t about to start giving additional details, saying only that “We do not comment on national security matters.”

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was also impersonated last year and her email was hacked during Trump’s 2024 campaign.

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— Forbes (@forbes.com) 12:15 PM · Aug 17, 2026

One wonders, though, what could have happened if someone like Burnham hadn’t become “suspicious” that the contact was not legitimate. The obvious question is of course, “Why would it be up to the Prime Minister himself to determine whether the contact is real?” Surely, the identity of a new contact reaching out to the personal device of the British PM should be ascertained/confirmed through official diplomatic channels before the PM starts texting with that person, yes? How is that not already the standard operating procedure? Is Donald Trump’s phone getting random texts from unknown numbers as well, and just what is he telling them?

Regardless, the episode apparently raised fears abroad in the UK (and now probably in many other places now that this news is breaking) that the personal devices of top U.S. White House aides could be compromised, with contact lists and message history available to hackers. After all, this exact same thing already happened last year: Multiple U.S. senators, governors and business executives received both texts and phone calls from someone claiming to be Susie Wiles, presumably wanting to speak with them about sensitive government matters. At the time The Wall Street Journal reported that Wiles had been telling Washington figures that her cellphone contacts had been hacked, and an investigation was reportedly launched at that time by the FBI. That investigation has yielded no public result or culpable parties, but here we are a year later, and we’re learning of more global figures being reached by the phantom Susie Wiles. This begs the question, just how vulnerable are the devices of those in the Trump White House? To POLITICO, an unnamed White House official offered this flat reassurance: “This incident had nothing to do with the Chief of Staff’s devices being hacked.”

This type of embarrassing scenario, which is perhaps an inevitability in a world where our elected officials and top aides are so often technologically semi-illiterate septuagenarians, has unfolded repeatedly on both sides of the Atlantic in the last decade. The UK’s Boris Johnson, for instance, once reportedly managed to have an 18-minute long phone call with an imposter he thought was the prime minister of Armenia. More recently, the UK’s David Cameron likewise had a video call and exchanged text messages with a person posting as former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

In terms of American vulnerabilities, though, there are probably few people on Earth with more wide-ranging access to damaging information about Trump or critical national security secrets than Susie Wiles, a woman whose influence runs through every corner of the Trump administration. Wiles is so plugged in and essential, in fact, that even her shocking disparagement of practically every single other Trump appointee or aide in an infamous Dec. 2025 Vanity Fair article wasn’t enough to make her lose the favor of the President. Hell, she even described Trump as being vengeance-obsessed and having “an alcoholic’s personality” in the same piece, while calling his administration’s response to the Epstein Files pathetic, and Trump still didn’t give a shit. She has repeatedly positioned herself as one of the only no-nonsense adults within the administration, to the point that she was the one forced to come down on Cabinet members earlier this year for things like their unnecessary luxury travel. Wiles, in a roundabout way, might even be the person most responsible for potentially saving hemp-derived THC products from an upcoming ban purely for reasons of nepotism, because her new son-in-law owns multiple hemp businesses. We are talking about one of the most influential people in the country here.

Susie Wiles son-in-law Bret Worley, is the CEO of MC Nutraceuticals, a major manufacturer and distributor of hemp products. Trump had signed a law that would ban these products on Nov 12. Now Trump is delaying and Ted Budd is pissed. Ted Budd is a tobacco guy. Now the factions are fighting.

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— Caroleeena (@caroleeena.bsky.social) 5:49 PM · Aug 6, 2026

This is, to put it bluntly, not the kind of person whose phone information the United States can afford to see hacked under any circumstances. But given the laissez faire attitude the administration takes toward practically anything other than their own personal liberty, do any of us truly believe that members of the White House are following every possible best practice to prevent such a disaster from happening? Does Susie Wiles’ phone even have a password on it, do you think, and what are the chances that password is just “Trump4547”?