Madeleine Westerhout reportedly told press her boss avoids being photographed with his youngest daughter, due to her weight.
If there’s one thing the Trump outfit cannot abide, it’s unflattering remarks made to the press. Such appears to be the case with the president’s former personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, who lost her job this past week, reportedly due to comments she made about Donald Trump’s relationship with daughters Ivanka and Tiffany. Trump, meanwhile, pushed back against the news Saturday morning, tweeting that he had forgiven his ex-assistant: “I fully understood and forgave her! I love Tiffany, doing great!”
Westerhout, 28, made an abrupt exit from her two-year White House post on Thursday, having reportedly been caught giving unflattering comments to press sources. Initially, reports indicated that Westerhout had let loose “personal details about Trump’s family” during an off-the-record dinner with deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley and multiple reporters.
Politico now reports that—upon Gidley’s exit from the dinner—Westerhout allegedly told the reporters that she was closer to President Trump than either of his daughters, and that Trump deliberately avoided taking photos with Tiffany, as “he perceived her as overweight.” Westerhout also reportedly claimed that Trump couldn’t recognize Tiffany in a crowd, and subsequently discussed both her boss’s eating habits and his son, Barron. A Politico source familiar with the dinner added, “[Westerhout] had a couple drinks and in an uncharacteristically unguarded moment, she opened up to the reporters.”
Trump himself offered a few comments on the situation before his weekend stay at Camp David, defending Westerhout while acknowledging her apparent gaffe. “You don’t say things like she said which were just a little bit hurtful to some people,” he stated, before pivoting to Tiffany herself. “She’s a wonderful person and she studies so hard. She’s a great student. She’s a great person. . . . Tiffany is great. I love Tiffany.”
By Saturday morning, more full-throated defenses of Westerhout and his daughter emerged on Twitter. “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 wrote, seemingly tacking on a veiled threat. “She called me yesterday to apologize, had a bad night.”
We always knew it would come to Trump insisting "I love Tiffany" to reporters on the lawn of the White House. pic.twitter.com/74a9dRNQi6
— Matt Wilstein (@mattwilstein) August 30, 2019
