Guilfoyle scandal proves too much for Trump with midterms looming

Just days after a series of reports engulfed Kimberly Guilfoyle in scandal, the White House announced and accepted the U.S. ambassador to Greece’s resignation.

“We didn’t like what we were reading,” President Trump told reporters after the White House announced the move.

The abrupt dismissal marked a stark contrast to how other offenses in the administration have been handled in Trump’s second term. And even when Trump has dismissed or reassigned top officials following negative press coverage, he rarely makes such a direct link.

Sources said Trump’s handling of the Guilfoyle situation largely came down to timing: Midterm elections are looming, and Republicans are fighting to keep key seats.

“Regardless of whether the allegations are true, you cannot have a story that alleges ‘corruption’ with the midterm elections three weeks away,” one GOP strategist told The Hill.

“When Trump says, ‘I didn’t want to continue reading about this,’ he’s telling the truth; it had become too big a distraction when it’s an all-hands-on-deck moment for the GOP.”

Guilfoyle was the subject of a succession of negative news stories, largely from The Wall Street Journal, laying out a series of embarrassing — and possibly illegal — activity.

Apart from expressing his disapproval of the headlines surrounding Guilfoyle, Trump also distanced himself from his almost daughter-in-law. Guilfoyle was the longtime fiancée of the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., though they broke up well before her appointment to the glitzy diplomatic post.

“No, she wasn’t a member of my family. She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago,” he told reporters Tuesday. “She was doing a good job, but we didn’t like what we were reading.”

The allegations against her included soliciting $100,000 in cash from a Trump donor to pay down credit card debts before her confirmation hearing and touting her connection to Trump officials, detailed in text messages obtained by The Hill and NewsNation.

The Journal reports also detailed Guilfoyle persistently promoting a Greek shipping firm and including one of its lobbyists in a number of diplomatic meetings, and boasting of close ties with two Greek tycoons who were bankrolling her luxury travel.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told The Hill that the controversy surrounding Guilfoyle only stokes voters’ frustrations with corruption in the administration, pointing out that it is the No. 2 issue they’re focused on in the polls.

A Gallup poll from September found that 89 percent of U.S. respondents said government corruption is widespread. That figure is up 10 percentage points from last year and up 16 percentage points from 2024.

The embarrassing news coverage coincided with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s diplomatic travel to Greece, where he delivered a sweeping historical speech championing Western civilization with a cinematic backdrop of the Acropolis.

Media reports on the trip largely homed in on getting his reaction to Guilfoyle’s reported conduct. Rubio refused to engage in the questions when speaking to reporters in Athens.

The State Department did not return a request for comment on Guilfoyle’s resignation.

A Republican source close to the Rubio team told The Hill that they think this ouster is different from others in the administration because it occurred under Rubio’s watch. The source described Rubio as a “good actor in all of this.”

“Rubio oversees this department and wants to keep it clean,” the source said, adding that “the corruption issue is growing as a political problem for the Trump admin and this occurred in the weeks leading up to the election.”

“So, you had Marco wanting it and the politics dictating it,” the source continued.

Guilfoyle also adds to the growing list of women fired in Trump’s second administration. The president ousted former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Attorney General Pam Bondi. Former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned.

Noem was pushed out shortly after contradicting Trump about his blessing for a government-funded ad campaign, while Chavez-DeRemer was the subject of an inspector general’s probe into a series of abuse-of-office allegations.

By contrast, Mike Waltz, ambassador to the United Nations, was put in his position after taking the fall for inviting The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief into a private Signal chat discussing war plans in Yemen. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was also found to have erred by sharing war plans in the chat.

As Guilfoyle’s conduct emerged in the press, Trump also addressed growing scrutiny around two aides close to his chief of staff Susie Wiles: James Blair and Chris LaCivita.

Trump issued a rare public rebuke against the two men after The New York Times reported they were paid to advise a pro-Russia political party in Republika Srpska, a small self-governing territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He called the men “outside consultants,” and added that if there’s a conflict of interest, he “will terminate them, immediately!”

Democrats view Guilfoyle’s ousting as only a branch on the poison tree of corruption that is rooted by Trump.

In July, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) launched an “anti-corruption” initiative laying out allegations and concerns over how Trump and his family have enriched themselves alongside connections with foreign governments and favorable federal policies.

“One corrupt Trump official down, hundreds more to go,” Schumer posted on social media Tuesday.

If Democrats seize the majority in the House and Senate in the election next month, expect investigations into the president’s profits while in office and the business dealings of his family and close inner circle.

“When the President himself routinely uses his position to enrich himself and his allies — from crypto schemes to shoddy merch — it is no wonder that cases like this exist,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media.

Because of Guilfoyle’s close connections to the Trump family, some have raised the possibility that she might go scorched-earth if fired. However, her resignation message remained supportive of Trump and Rubio.

A former White House official said Guilfoyle might feel motivated to stay on the president’s good side.

“I know a lot of people are imagining she may turn on the family now that they’ve kicked her to the curb. But keep in mind: she probably wants a presidential pardon very badly, and she doesn’t get that if she starts looking to cuddle up to Democrats,” the former official said.

Julia Manchester contributed to this report.