Trump Chief of Staff Pick Worked for PR Firm that Represents Trulieve Cannabis

Well, it looks like a woman will be in charge after all at the White House. 

Donald Trump has named as his Chief of Staff pick Floridian and longtime Republican operative Susie Wiles, which will make her the first woman to hold that position. 

According to the New York Times, Wiles worked for Ballard Partners, a Florida-based lobbying firm. According to their website, Ballard represents Trulieve, the mega cannabis company whose female CEO Kim Rivers reportedly met with Trump just before he announced he would be voting in favor of Florida's measure to legalize cannabis on the November ballot. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis strongly opposed the measure, charging that it would benefit only Trulieve, which contributed over $70 million to the Smart & Safe Florida campaign behind Amendment 3. The measure won a majority vote (56%) but fell short of the 60% vote it needed to become a Florida constitutional amendment, similar to the reproductive rights measure also on the state's ballot, which garnered 57% of the vote. 

Wiles helped DeSantis win the 2018 Florida governor’s race, but he later fired and denounced her; she then helped Trump crush DeSantis in the G.O.P. presidential primaries. She recently worked at the lobbying giant Mercury, whose clients include SpaceX, AT&T, and the Embassy of Qatar. Politico reports that until earlier this year, she lobbied lobbied Congress on “FDA regulations” for the tobacco company Swisher International while running the Trump campaign. 

According to the Times, Wiles has run Trump's political operation for nearly four years, and has been the only campaign manager to survive an entire campaign working for him. The daughter of the football legend Pat Summerall, Wiles reportedly "did not emerge in politics from Mr. Trump’s hard-right political base" and "championed the former president’s effort to expand his coalition in the general election beyond the party’s older white base to appeal to Black and Latino voters who typically had not supported Republicans." 

Summerall, an NFL champion kicker and longtime commentator, admitted to becoming an alcoholic during his broadcast career. In his 2006 biography, he recounted how Susie staged an intervention for him, leading to him checking into the Betty Ford Clinic for treatment. 

Gabbard (center) with members of California NORML
at the 2019 NORML Lobby Day in DC

Co-chairing Trump's transition team is former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who introduced the first-ever bipartisan bill that would end the federal prohibition of marijuana by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act in 2017. Gabbard was critical of Kamala Harris's record on marijuana when she ran against her for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 2019, saying during a debate, “Sen. Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”

Also on the Trump transition team is former independent Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, Jr., who along with Gabbard has long been an outspoken advocate of legalizing marijuana. Just before the election, Kennedy claimed Trump promised him control of "the public health agencies, which is HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH and a few others. And also the USDA, which is, you know, key to making America healthy, because we've got to get off of seed oils and we've got to get off of pesticides."  Trump said at the pre-election Al Smith dinner, "We're gonna let him go wild for a little while, then I'm gonna have to maybe reign him back, because he's got some pretty wild ideas, but most of them are really good."  

Upon announcing his support of Florida's Amendment 3 in September, Trump also called medical marijuana "amazing" and said that his administration would “continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common sense laws, including safe banking for state authorized companies, and supporting states rights to pass marijuana laws, like in Florida, that work so well for their citizens.” That sounds more like the old "research dodge" than full federal legalization, but at least the Biden administration's efforts to reschedule cannabis could go forward along with safe banking under Trump, if Congress complies.

 Of course, Trump makes a lot of promises he may not keep, and spouts extreme and scary ideas like executing drug dealers. It's hoped that Wiles will be able to somehow keep him in check. Late in the campaign, when Trump gave a widely criticized speech in Pennsylvania in which suggested he wouldn’t mind the media being shot, Wiles came out to stare at him silently. 

 

Trump Awards Medal of Freedom to
The Heritage Foundation's Edwin Meese 

If we get cannabis legalization under Trump's second administration, we will have to work to see that it doesn't mainly benefit the rich, like his tax cuts did in his first term. His 2024 campaign was short on plans, or even concepts of them. The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 doesn't mention marijuana, but calls for DOJ to "rigorously" prosecute interstate drug activity, and for the ONDCP's grant funding the align with the President’s drug control priorities "and not woke nonprofits with leftist policy agendas." 

One of several pro-business conservative think thanks founded in the wake of the 1971 the Powell Memorandum,  The Heritage Foundation was initially funded by beer magnate Joseph Coors. Heritage’s home page seeks to sever a Trump/Project 2025 connection, but quickly leads to a post bragging about how much of their 2018 agenda was adopted by Trump in his first term. 

Heritage Research Fellow Paul Larkin testified against a proposed 2023 medical marijuana law in North Carolina with a piece titled, Smokable Cannabis is Not a Legitimate Therapeutic Treatment Modality. Another 2023 article by Larkin on the Heritage website is titled, "Why the FDA Could Not Approve Raw Cannabis as a 'Safe,' 'Effective,' and 'Uniform' Drug." Heritage fellow Charles Stimson has even come out against safe banking for "pot pushers." 

Larkin is no medical expert, but rather a DOJ prosecutor and Orrin Hatch/Judiciary committee advisor. He and Stimson are both part of the Heritage Center for legal and Judicial Studies named for Edwin Meese, who remains a trustee at Heritage. Meese helped CA Governor Ronald Reagan smash student protests at UC Berkeley, and as President Reagan's Attorney General, he chaired the National Drug Policy Board, which coordinated with Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" antidrug campaign. Near the end of Reagan's presidency, Meese was implicated but never charged in the Iran–Contra affair, and Contra connections to the cocaine/crack epidemic remain in dispute. In 2019, when Donald Trump awarded Meese the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he praised Meese's anti-drug record, noting that "we're dealing with a whole new set of drugs" in his administration. He also noted Heritage's "very helpful" input into his administration's judicial appointments. 

Also see: Florida cannabis tracking company linked to men in Trump Media insider trading scheme

 

UPDATES: The US Cannabis Council has hired Mercury Public Affairs for DC representation as Donald Trump returns to the White House

Donald Trump's Second Pick for AG, Pam Bondi, Also Worked for Ballard PR Firm, and Opposed Legalization.