Madeleine Westerhout is among the staff members Donald Trump dismissed during his presidency. She served as Trump\u2019s executive personal assistant for most of his term, starting in January 2017, when Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president. Initially thrilled about her role, Westerhout\u2019s tenure ended abruptly after two and a half years due to disparaging remarks she made about Trump\u2019s family. According to Politico, she criticized the weight of Trump\u2019s youngest daughter, Tiffany, and implied she had a closer relationship with Trump than his children did.<\/p>\n
Westerhout made these comments at an \u201coff the record\u201d dinner, assuming her remarks wouldn\u2019t be shared. However, the reporters present reported her comments, leading to her termination. After her dismissal became public, Trump addressed the situation on X (formerly known as Twitter), acknowledging her mistake but extending a surprising olive branch. He tweeted, \u201cWhile Madeleine Westerhout has a fully enforceable confidentiality agreement, she is a very good person and I don\u2019t think there would ever be reason to use it. She called me yesterday to apologize, had a bad night. I fully understood and forgave her!\u201d Despite his forgiving tone, Trump still decided to let her go.<\/p>\n
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In 2020, Westerhout appeared on \u201cFox & Friends\u201d to discuss what led her to make the unfortunate comments about Trump. She explained, \u201cOn a rare day off, after a couple of drinks by the pool, I accepted an invitation to an off-the-record dinner with four reporters and a White House colleague of mine. At that dinner, I said some things that I didn\u2019t mean and that I never should have said. And I deeply regret that, but I take full responsibility for my actions that night and really regret that I hurt people that I care about very, very much.\u201d She emphasized that she wouldn\u2019t let the incident define her future.<\/p>\n
Her comments mirrored Trump\u2019s earlier statements, where he suggested that alcohol had influenced her behavior. In August 2019, Trump told reporters, \u201cI think she said some things. And she called me. She was very upset. She was very down. And she said she was drinking a little bit. And she was with reporters, and everything she said was off the record.\u201d Trump acknowledged the severity of her remarks but reiterated that he didn\u2019t see her drinking as an excuse, though he still considered her a \u201cgood person\u201d and praised her work.<\/p>\n
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Westerhout later testified for the prosecution in Trump\u2019s criminal hush money trial. She recounted her dismissal, describing it as a \u201cregretful youthful indiscretion\u201d and expressed that she had learned a lot from the experience. During her testimony, she discussed checks Trump reportedly paid to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, allegedly to influence the election by concealing an affair with Stormy Daniels. Westerhout described receiving checks in a FedEx envelope containing a manila folder with a stack of checks.<\/p>\n
She also provided insights into Trump\u2019s social media habits, noting his preference for capitalizing certain words like \u201ccountry,\u201d using exclamation points, and favoring the Oxford comma. Westerhout also reiterated her positive view of working for Trump, promoting him as a supporter of women during her \u201cFox & Friends\u201d interview. She stated, \u201cHe promotes women. He surrounds himself with strong, intelligent women. He is married to one. He has raised two of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Madeleine Westerhout is among the staff members Donald Trump dismissed during his presidency. She served as Trump\u2019s executive personal assistant\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":44730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168],"class_list":["post-44729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-donald-trump"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}