Meet the mild-mannered Florida woman quietly steering the Trump campaign

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

71% : She helped orchestrate an unprecedented "campaign from the courtroom" that included daily diatribes from Trump, events around Manhattan, court visits from top allies, including the House speaker and vice presidential contenders and a huge fundraising blitz that helped Trump close the money gap with President Joe Biden despite his historic felony conviction earlier this spring.
71% : ""Trump is a free spirit, and Susie both recognizes that but at the same time I think she brings order and structure and organization to the Trump campaign and he trusts her, which is the absolute key element," Stone said.Wiles reputation as a top GOP operative was forged in Florida.
70% : "She is immersed in every aspect of Trump's 2024 operation, from developing the themes of next week's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to leading the search for Trump's running mate, with one ally saying that she has "the biggest vote" in who is selected other than Trump.
65% : Trump craves it.
64% : She's someone Trump trusts with his most important tasks, such as devising the plan to dispatch DeSantis.
60% : Wiles won four statewide races in 10 years, delivering the state for Scott, DeSantis in 2018 and Trump both in 2016 and 2020.
58% : While critics may view Wiles as abetting a candidate many Democrats view as a wannabe dictator, her closeness with Trump and his confidence in her makes the Florida grandmother essential to the GOP's bid to reclaim the White House.
55% : She helped orchestrate a show of political force by getting most of Florida's GOP congressional delegation to back Trump at a key early moment, before DeSantis had officially announced.
54% : Trump is all drama.
54% : "Nunberg noted that Trump had a lot of advantages in the primary and still struggled to win a majority of GOP votes in the early contests.
53% : If Trump completes his resurrection after losing in 2020 and facing widespread recrimination following the Jan. 6, 2021, deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol, Wiles will be a big reason why.Wiles, meanwhile, has resurrected herself after steering DeSantis to his first gubernatorial victory in 2018 and then being booted from his orbit.
52% : She vetted all the contenders, digging through their records and making sure Trump had "full visibility into all of it," she said, while noting that the campaign team doesn't try to influence or advocate for any person.
50% : USA TODAY spoke with more than 20 people who know Wiles, some going back decades, who describe a savvy political operator who achieved unprecedented success in Florida and has made herself essential to Trump, emerging from his 2020 defeat and her own fallout with DeSantis to become a major power player.
48% : Wiles prefers to work behind-the-scenes, like when she lined up a series of congressional endorsements for Trump in Florida early in 2023 before Gov. Ron DeSantis had even entered the GOP primary, laying the groundwork to humiliate DeSantis by getting his home state lawmakers to reject him.
46% : Trump ended up carrying Florida by more than three percentage points, tripling his margin of victory from 2016.
45% : Wiles travelled to Atlanta for the debate, flying to the event with Trump.
44% : While there are many stylistic differences between Trump and Wiles, they share at least one thing in common: Both are attempting a comeback after their political careers seemed to be over.
43% : Trump gave her a second chance.
43% : Yet while many Republicans distanced themselves from Trump after Jan. 6, Wiles drew closer.
42% : That may have been part of her appeal to Trump, who has long been drawn to celebrity.
42% : "I think she has a good sense of where the political winds are going and I think she knew that this wasn't going to be the end of Trump but also that a lot of people are going to run away and be scared and that Trump values loyalty, and so I think she saw an opportunity to sort of get her foot in the door at a time where she could prove herself to him and sort of solidify her position in Trump world, and she did that.
40% : Wiles killed multiple times the plans for the notorious dinner that Trump ultimately had in late 2022 at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, that caused an uproar when Ye brought along white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
39% : Trump asked Wiles to dinner in early 2021 and eventually tasked her with getting his Save America PAC's affairs in order.
38% : She's judicious in her efforts to control access to Trump, though, and how she tries to influence him, observers say.
33% : A Republican who is close to Trump world and knows Wiles believes she saw a chance to resurrect her career by helping Trump at his lowest point.
31% : While Trump pummeled DeSantis as "DeSanctimonious," Wiles worked behind the scenes to outmaneuver his campaign.
28% : "I just don't think that's what you want on your obituary," Delaney, who would not vote for Trump in either 2016 or 2020, said he told Wiles.
26% : Wiles said she "didn't like the Capitol being destroyed but that was a very small minority of the people that were there" and she doesn't believe Trump should be blamed for what happened.
25% : She is flying right exactly on the radar where you want to be.""He tried to ruin her life"In many ways, it's an odd couple pairing between Trump and Wiles, who was described in a recent Wall Street Journal column as "the most important woman in American politics.
25% : He pressured Trump to fire her from managing his 2020 campaign in Florida, which he did.
24% : Wiles is believed to be the unnamed individual in Smith's original indictment whom Trump allegedly showed a classified map to, according to ABC News.
23% : Trump is chaotic.
22% : Back with TrumpAs the 2020 election grew closer, Trump's campaign grew nervous about Florida and decided to bring Wiles back despite DeSantis' opposition.
20% : Overall, though, the 2020 election was a disaster for Trump, one compounded by his refusal to accept the results, resulting in a mob of his supporters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.