Vanity Fair has attracted significant attention this week after inviting Vice President JD Vance, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, among other Trump officials, for a photoshoot ahead of the publication's profile on Chief of Staff Susie Wiles—not realizing just how brutal the two-part article would be.
The profile takes an unusually intimate look at Wiles, a veteran political operative long known for projecting unwavering loyalty to her boss.
But in the feature, which drew on 11 interviews conducted over nearly a year with cooperation from the White House, Wiles was surprisingly forthcoming than her public-facing role typically allows, speaking candidly about President Donald Trump, his inner circle, and the administration’s direction.
Oh, and the Trump administration staff members who participated looked like they were posing for a sexy photoshoot in some pictures.
You can see them in the carousel of imagesVanity Fair posted on their Instagram page.
The Vanity Fair profile is well worth reading for those interested in reading the most intimate and revealing profile of the Trump administration's inner circle—but did these officials even realize as they posed that the final result is undoubtedly unflattering?
No, it doesn't appear to be the case—and they were swiftly mocked for this.
It's worth noting that Vanity Fair photographer Christopher Anderson has pushed back against criticism of his stark close-range portraits of the Cabinet, such as the one of Rubio below.
Viewers quickly zeroed in on details like visible filler injection sites on Leavitt’s lips—elements that a more conventional or deferential approach might have minimized or erased altogether.
Anderson pointed out that portraits like these—unvarnished and all—are a hallmark of his work.
He said as much to The Independent:
“Very close-up portraiture has been a fixture in a lot of my work over the years. Particularly, political portraits that I’ve done over the years. I like the idea of penetrating the theater of politics.”
“I know there’s a lot to be made with, ‘Oh, he intentionally is trying to make people look bad’ and that kind of thing – that’s not the case. If you look at my photograph work, I’ve done a lot of close-ups in the same style with people of all political stripes.”
Perhaps the Trump administration should have done... you know... research.
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