By Chris Whipple with Photographer Christopher Anderson

Vanity Fair is closing out the year strong with this week’s profile on President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and the team that serves the president alongside her. The fallout of this piece has played across the news and caused a stir in the White House and Washington, D.C.

Wiles grew up the daughter of NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall, an alcoholic who required repeated interventions. She learned to manage "big personalities" and says Trump has "an alcoholic's personality—operates [with] a view that there's nothing he can't do." After Trump berated her publicly in 2016, she walked out, telling him, "If you want somebody to set their hair on fire and be crazy, I'm not your girl." He called her every day after. Now she's the only force channeling his impulses—greenlighting pardons for January 6 rioters who beat cops ("they had already served more time than sentencing guidelines suggested," she claims, contradicting court records), defending deportations that mistakenly swept up US citizens including cancer patients, and calling Elon Musk "an avowed ketamine user" who sleeps in a sleeping bag while gutting USAID programs that prevented millions of deaths.

Wiles insists she's not an enabler, just a facilitator of Trump's vision. She sits off-camera during Oval Office events, "the one that gets hit in the head with the boom mic," surrounded by young MAGA men she calls her pit bulls. When asked if Trump will use military force to suppress voting, she snaps it's "categorically false"—but admits they're pushing every legal boundary, confident courts will ultimately let them prevail.

Read on to Part Two here.

By Rachel Syme

This elegant profile from The New Yorker’s Rachel Syme captures Carol Burnett at 92, still working steadily and fiercely protective of her sunny public image, an approach shaped by a chaotic childhood she's spent a lifetime reframing as lucky breaks and happy accidents.

Burnett grew up in a single Hollywood room with her grandmother Mae, a Christian Scientist hoarder who took barbiturates daily and feared dying alone. Her mother Louise, who aspired to be a columnist, ran bookies from down the hall and fell into alcoholism after an affair produced Burnett's half-sister. Her father Jody drank himself to death at 47; Louise followed at 46. Both died before Burnett achieved stardom.

Despite all this, her relentless optimism became her brand. "The Carol Burnett Show" ran from 1967 to 1978, drawing 30 million viewers per episode with exuberant slapstick that avoided politics entirely. After 9/11, her reunion special became one of the year's most-watched programs by offering "mindless silliness." She's collected seven Emmys and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Now she's experiencing a late-career resurgence on "Better Call Saul," "Palm Royale," and "Hacks"—still playing, as she puts it, "like a little girl."

By Haley Shapley

I am no better than anyone else when it comes to someone else’s drama being aired in the open. Which is why I thoroughly enjoyed Haley Shapley’s essay exposing her seemingly perfect boyfriend as a serial cheater juggling more than a dozen women.

Jake seemed ideal: a firefighter-turned-EMT who'd played Aladdin at Disneyland, who cried about his uncle's death and called her cat his best friend. He was vulnerable without overdisclosing, patient, supportive. "I'm mostly grateful that he's kind," she texted a friend. Everyone adored him. But when she bought tickets to see Aladdin on Broadway as a surprise, her world unraveled. He texted a photo from his "California trip" showing a Southwest Airlines logo—but Southwest didn't fly the route he claimed. His distance on Tinder showed 121 miles away, not nearly California. Then came the TikTok: a young woman seething about how Jake dated her for two months while his long-distance girlfriend was moving into his Portland apartment.

The writer contacted over a dozen women Jake had harmed, most within the past year. He'd been cheating the entire time—physically with at least five people, emotionally with countless others. He had a full-fledged girlfriend when they went on that first date. One woman found panties under his mattress; she told him cheating could literally kill her due to an autoimmune disease. He swore he'd never risk her, then continued for six months. Another became suicidal. He only moved to Seattle to escape his reputation after being forced to resign from firefighting for dishonesty.

Lunch Break Reads is sponsored in part by The Hustle Daily

Some people use Claude to write emails. Others use it to basically run their entire business while they play Wordle.

This isn't just ChatGPT's cooler cousin. It's the AI that's quietly revolutionizing how smart people work – writing entire business plans, planning marketing campaigns, and basically becoming the intern you never have to pay.

The Hustle's new guide shows you exactly how the AI-literate are leaving everyone else behind. Subscribe for instant access.

Get our Claude playbook

By Priya Krishna

Priya Krishna spent 12 hours straight—8pm to 8am—inside Brooklyn's Kellogg's Diner, watching the century-old institution transform from hour to hour as different New York characters cycled through.

The 24-hour diner is vanishing. New York lost 13 percent of its round-the-clock restaurants between 2020 and 2024, casualties of rising costs, food delivery apps, and pandemic-altered sleep schedules. Kellogg's itself closed for six months before reopening with new ownership, a refurbished interior, and chef Jackie Carnesi's slightly upscale menu. Two months later, they restored 24-hour service.

The dinner crowd ordered nachos and orange wine. Around 11pm, tequila shots replaced martinis as revelers arrived. At 1am the menu shrank but added Cuban sandwiches. A rock singer performed the entire "Thriller" dance solo in the dining room. Between 2 and 5am came the wild bunch: one woman vomited on her table and was escorted out shrouded in scarves "like a celebrity trying to evade paparazzi." A 60-year-old ICU nurse and her wife ordered dinner after clubbing. Around 6am, the lighting shifted to soft yellow, the manager's signal for drunk people to leave. Hospitality workers finishing shifts ordered enchiladas and espresso martinis for "dinner and breakfast," while a jet-lagged Google employee from South Korea dug into pancakes.

By Jennifer Justus, Photos by Houston Cofield

Beulah started as an assistant lunch lady in 1950 at age 43, after raising eight children. She'd married young on railroad tracks outside a textile plant, never learned to drive, only had a third-grade education. But she became known for vegetable soups, yeast rolls, and making sure no child left hungry. She'd peek into lunch bags of kids who couldn't afford cafeteria meals, finding nothing but leftover biscuits, then slip them extra bowls of grits. When the principal scolded her for giving away free food, she shot back: "Do I make money for this lunchroom? Do I lose money? Well, don't you ever get on to me again. No kid will ever leave this lunchroom hungry."

Today's cafeteria workers face similar struggles with less support. The Trump administration cut millions in farm-to-school funding even while RFK Jr. champions scratch cooking—the same healthy standards conservatives mocked when Michelle Obama proposed them. Tennessee's Lisa Seiber-Garland had secured grants for local butter lettuce and purple hull peas; one farmer planted strawberries and watermelons to meet her order, then the grant vanished. She still buys what she can. When a parent demanded she not feed her child, Seiber-Garland refused: "If she asks to eat in my line, I'm gonna feed her." She covers lunch balances from her own pocket and keeps a "share table" to reduce waste.

Really hope you enjoyed the selection of stories today. I am always interested in hearing from you. If you have thoughts on how I can make this email even better, do not hesitate to reach out.

Brett

Want to help support the Lunch Club? Consider buying me a cup of coffee.

Your dream retirement isn’t going to fund itself—that’s what your portfolio is for.

When generating income for a comfortable retirement, there are countless options to weigh. Muni bonds, dividends, REITs, Master Limited Partnerships—each comes with risk and oppor-tunity.

The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income from Fisher investments shows you ways you can position your portfolio to help you maintain or improve your lifestyle in retirement.

It also highlights common mistakes, such as tax mistakes, that can make a substantial differ-ence as you plan your well-deserved future.

Download your free copy today.