Trump's Ex-Aide Madeleine Westerhout's Firing Fully Explained

Madeleine Westerhout is one of several staffers Donald Trump fired during his presidency. Before that, Westerhout served as Trump's executive personal assistant for the majority of his single term as POTUS. The College of Charleston graduate joined Trump's staff in January 2017, the same month he was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. And while she initially expressed her excitement for the job, her role would dissolve roughly two and a half years later thanks to negative comments she made about Trump's family. Politico reported that Westerhout criticized the weight of Donald's youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump. She also implied that she held a closer bond with him than his kids.

Westerhout assumed she was safe to speak at the "off the record" dinner, but the reporters present felt otherwise and published the comments that led to her firing. After news of Westerhout's firing broke, the then-president took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to acknowledge her faux pas and surprisingly extend her an olive branch. "While Madeleine Westerhout has a fully enforceable confidentiality agreement, she is a very good person and I don't think there would ever be reason to use it," he tweeted. "She called me yesterday to apologize, had a bad night. I fully understood and forgave her!" Despite the praise, Trump still ousted Westerhout.

Roughly one year later, Madeleine Westerhout appeared on "Fox & Friends" to share what prompted her to make those disparaging comments about Donald Trump. "On 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, and at that dinner, I said some things that I didn't mean and that I never should have said," Westerhout shared in 2020. "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." However, she also revealed that she wouldn't allow the experience to define her forever. 

Westerhout's comments echoed the politician's comments from a year earlier when he implied that alcohol had influenced her commentary. In August 2019, the former reality star addressed the press about Westerhout. "I think she said some things. And she called me. She was very upset. She was very down," he told reporters, according to People. "And she said she was drinking a little bit. And she was with reporters, and everything she said was off the record." Trump, who acknowledged again the severity of her comments, also revealed that he didn't feel her drinking was an excuse for what she'd said. "She mentioned a couple of things about my children." Still, Trump called her a "good person" and said she was great at her job.

Madeleine Westerhout took the witness stand for the prosecutors in Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial. During her testimony, she touched on many topics, including Donald's decision to fire her. "I feel like I learned a lot from that experience and I have learned a lot since then," Westerhout said, likening the incident to a "regretful youthful indiscretion," The Independent noted. Westerhout also answered questions about checks which Trump reportedly paid to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, allegedly in an attempt to influence the election by concealing his affair with Stormy Daniels. "The cheques came in a FedEx envelope, so I opened the envelope and inside was a manila folder with a stack of cheques," said Westerhout.

Westerhout also shared innocuous details about Donald's social media habits. "My recollection is there are certain words he liked to capitalize. Words like 'country'. He liked to use exclamation points," she said, according to the BBC. "It is my understanding that he liked to use the Oxford comma." Later in the court proceedings, Westerhout claimed that she enjoyed working for Donald Trump, whom she previously positioned while promoting her book, "Off The Record: My Dream Job at the White House, How I Lost It, What I Learned," as an advocate for women. "He promotes women," she said during her "Fox & Friends" interview. "He surrounds himself with strong, intelligent women. He is married to one. He has raised two of them."