Kimberly Guilfoyle Broke Trump’s Most Important Rule

After half-heartedly including some actual professionals in his first administration, Donald Trump is now served almost exclusively by sycophants and family members.

The president has made clear that he cares about loyalty more than qualifications, but the astonishing incompetence and corruption of many of his appointees raises an obvious question: What does it take to get fired by Trump’s White House? Kimberly Guilfoyle’s resignation yesterday as ambassador to Greece provides some clues.

Guilfoyle has been accused of blatant corruption both before and during her time as an envoy.

She denies these allegations, but her resignation—which the White House requested—isn’t really about corruption.

The idea that Guilfoyle, and only Guilfoyle, crossed some sort of previously unseen corruption red line is laughable.

If ethical and legal questions, including the now-moribund standard of “appearances of impropriety,” were grounds for dismissal in this administration, Trump would have already shed several other members of his team.

Rather, Guilfoyle was pushed out because she was an embarrassment.

She overstepped her bounds, tried to trade on the president’s name, and then made the administration look bad when she got caught.

Also, she is a woman, and in this administration, self-dealing is mostly a man’s game.

Indeed, by comparison with the charges leveled at others—including against the president himself, who seems utterly unconcerned with notions such as “emoluments”—Guilfoyle is decidedly a small-timer.

This past spring, for example, the Financial Times reported that a broker for Pete Hegseth attempted to make a big investment in defense industries just before the Iran war, raising suspicions of insider trading .

FBI Director Kash Patel has been accused of using government money as a slush fund to pay improper bonuses to his favorites within the Bureau.

“Border Czar” Tom Homan was caught on audio in 2024 accepting $50,000 in cash (wrapped in a Cava food bag , always the sign of a deal on the up-and-up) from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives, and yet he remains in his job.

Hegseth and Homan deny any wrongdoing; Patel and the FBI have offered no comment or explanation.