It began out so properly for her.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece till she was successfully fired on stay tv on Tuesday when the brand new White Home press secretary stated that President Trump had requested for her resignation, was at one level engaged to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. The couple owned a $9.7 million residence in Florida, appeared at Trump rallies collectively and despatched one another adoring posts on Instagram.
“Falling in love with my fiancé increasingly day by day,” Ms. Guilfoyle posted on Instagram on Valentine’s Day 2022. “@donaldjtrumpjr, you’re my finest buddy, my help system and my eternally man.”
“Thanks for all the time being there it doesn’t matter what the haters are throwing our approach,” he posted in 2024. “I like you.”
Immediately, the junior Mr. Trump is married to a Florida socialite and mannequin. And Ms. Guilfoyle, who was nominated as ambassador to Greece by the president quickly after her engagement to his son was damaged off two years in the past, is out of a job after a sequence of damning experiences in The Wall Road Journal, together with that she requested a Republican donor to repay $100,000 on her American Specific bank card simply earlier than her Senate affirmation listening to in July 2025.
The rise and fall of Ms. Guilfoyle, 57, was not a shock on the White Home, the place many noticed her as a flamboyant social gathering lady with questionable judgment.
Her supporters stated she was in actual fact a substantive particular person beneath the glitz. Ms. Guilfoyle, a former Fox Information host and a former prosecutor in San Francisco and Los Angeles, was as soon as married to Gavin Newsom, who would go on to change into governor of California and one of many Democratic Social gathering’s most outspoken critics of Mr. Trump.
Both approach, Ms. Guilfoyle was a Trump insider with a distinguished function within the household and its political operation. The president’s swiftness in firing her confirmed his willingness to chop off anybody who turns into a legal responsibility and a humiliation. Nevertheless it additionally left her with little purpose to stay loyal to the president and his household at a time when Mr. Trump’s political authority is ebbing.
In asserting her resignation, she decried what she referred to as false accusations and stated she would vigorously defend her popularity. Chatting with reporters outdoors the White Home, Mr. Trump did little to counsel he would proceed to maintain her shut.
“She wasn’t a member of my household,” he stated. “She, I assume, dated my son a very long time in the past.”
Ms. Guilfoyle, who arrived in Greece lower than a yr in the past, was a extremely uncommon selection for the function to start with.
In a way, it was Don Jr. who received her the job, not directly. In December 2024 he and the socialite and mannequin, Bettina Anderson, have been seen holding fingers as they left a Palm Seashore restaurant. The subsequent day, President-elect Trump introduced that Ms. Guilfoyle was his choose to be ambassador to Greece.
The timing instructed the president wished her overseas at an ungainly time for Don Jr., who married Ms. Anderson this yr. Ms. Guilfoyle’s allies stated that was not the case, though Greeks on the time questioned in the event that they have been merely getting the girl who had been jilted by the president’s son.
In Athens, Ms. Guilfoyle grew to become a sensation as quickly as she arrived, on the personal jet of a multimillionaire Greek American businessman. She wore a partly sheer black night costume to a Thanksgiving week dinner, joked with the Greek president when she introduced her credentials that she was engaged on discovering a brand new husband and stayed out till the small hours of the morning at Athens nightclubs.
“Oh, I wasn’t late, it was like earlier than 3,” Ms. Guilfoyle stated in an interview with The New York Occasions final yr, referring to how she had turned up at a nightclub for the 1:30 a.m. premiere present of her buddy, one of many nation’s most well-known pop singers, Konstantinos Argiros.
Paparazzi adopted her in every single place, however Greeks on the time stated Ms. Guilfoyle labored as laborious as she performed. By the character of her place and what they noticed as her entry to the White Home, they considered her as some of the vital folks within the nation. Principally forgotten have been her phrases on Fox throughout the Greek monetary disaster in 2015, when she referred to as Greeks “freeloaders” who needs to be punished like a canine that “pees on the rug.”
Early on, Ms. Guilfoyle introduced two vital enterprise offers, the event of a U.S.-backed port close to Athens and the exploration for pure fuel off the island of Corfu. Each have been within the works lengthy earlier than she arrived in Athens, however Greek officers stated she had jumped into the plans months earlier and wished them introduced on her watch.
Adonis Georgiadis, Greece’s well being minister and a vice chairman of the governing conservative social gathering, was amongst these impressed. “When she was first named, the folks have been, ‘What’s that?’” he stated. But when she delivers, he stated, “who cares if she has a see-through costume?”
Her downfall started final month, after The Journal reported about Ms. Guilfoyle and her potential conflicts of curiosity over vitality offers within the Balkans. Nevertheless it accelerated with the report this month that she had secretly begged a Republican donor to pay her bank card debt whereas she was ready to be confirmed as ambassador.
“Honey please I would like you to get this executed for me at this time,” she wrote in what seemed to be a textual content message to the donor, Eric Deters. Mr. Deters supplied what seemed to be screenshots of their correspondence to The Occasions after the preliminary report by The Journal.
It’s unclear what Ms. Guilfoyle will do now. As soon as a authorized analyst for CNN and ABC in New York, her profession at Fox led to 2018, when two folks conversant in her exit advised The Occasions on the situation of anonymity that she had been pressured to depart over questions on inappropriate office conduct.
The New Yorker reported two years later that Ms. Guilfoyle had been pressured out due to sexual harassment allegations introduced by a feminine assistant, together with that she had confirmed the assistant pictures of genitalia of males with whom Ms. Guilfoyle had had sexual relations.
The journal reported that the assistant had acquired a settlement of greater than $4 million. Ms. Guilfoyle denied the allegations by her lawyer on the time, and declined to remark within the Occasions interview final yr.
She was immensely pleased with her ambassadorship. On the finish of the interview, she identified a framed doc close to the doorway to her official residence, Jefferson Home, that listed all of the American ambassadors to Greece since 1948. Each one till Ms. Guilfoyle was a person.
“Right here I’m,” she stated, pointing to her identify. “I nearly cried.”
Edward Wong contributed reporting from Athens.
