Madeleine Westerhout
Former Director of White House Oval Office Operations and Personal Secretary to Donald Trump. She was fired in 2019 for sharing confidential information with reporters and testified in the Trump hush money case in 2024.
WHY WAS MADELEINE WESTERHOUT FIRED BY DONALD TRUMP?
She repeated some things she almost certainly heard while working at the White House with Trump, along with what appears to have been "gossip." Unfortunately for her, she did so drunk, in front of several reporters, one of whom leaked that she had done so.
Whether or not she believed the conversation was "off the record," or whether she could trust the reporters (which she clearly couldn't), the fact remains that she could no longer be trusted in her sensitive role and was fired. Given that she was earning $145,000 a year, it's doubtful she left voluntarily, as there aren't many jobs that pay that amount to someone with her skills and abilities.
Even more unfortunate for Trump, unless she lands somewhere else, and for the same money or more, she's likely to write a book to capitalize on her current notoriety. You can't fire someone, regardless of the cause, and expect them not to be angry or hurt by it.
Furthermore, she might have to testify before Congress, as she may be aware of a number of issues that various House committees might want to explore in more detail…
She was fired on August 29, 2019, after Trump learned she had shared details of the Trump family and Oval Office operations with reporters during an off the record dinner earlier that month.
Born: October 8, 1990 (age 35 years), Irvine, California, United States
Books: Off the Record: My Dream Job at the White House, How I Lost It, and What I Learned ( Originally Published August 11, 2020. )
Education: College of Charleston (2013), Woodbridge High School
Previous offices: Director of White House Oval Office Operations (2019–2019), Personal Secretary to the President of the United States (2017–2019)
Full name: Madeleine Elise Westerhout
Party: Republican Party
Madeleine Westerhout, the former "gatekeeper" of the Trump White House, writes about her relationship with the president, and tells the story of the terrible mistake that led to her losing her job.
From the first day President Trump stepped into the White House, Madeleine Westerhout was by his side, first as his executive assistant, then as the Director of Oval Office Operations. From her desk outside the Oval, she saw everyone who came in to see the president. She placed his phone calls, and was in the room for several historic moments. During her time working with President Trump at the White House, Camp David, Mar a Lago, and Bedminster, she grew to love her job and admire the president.
Off the Record: My Dream Job at the White House
Contents
1. The Dinner
2. Signs of Trouble.
3. Serving at the Pleasure of the President
4. I'm Sorry, Mr. President
5. Out of Hiding.
6. Blessing in Disguise.
7. A New Start in Washington
8. Greeter Girl.
9. Living the Dream
10. Learning the Ropes
11. Reconnecting the Old-Fashioned Way
12. The Perks and Perils of Power.
13. Some of the President's Men.
14. We Are Women, Hear Us Roar
15. A Test of Faith
16. The Search for Forgiveness
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE
The Dinner
The answer was no.
The answer was always no whenever I was asked to engage with reporters, and it didn't matter what the context was.
So naturally when I was invited to join a group of them for dinner one night in August 2019, I said no again. I had every reason to be wary.
After all, what good could possibly come of it?
Reporters are... reporters. They are not your friends. They care about the story, not you.
Especially the reporters who cover the Trump White House, where I worked, a White House that has been under siege from the Fourth Estate since Donald Trump took the oath of office as president. Heck, since November 2016, when the candidate the media was pulling for, Hillary Rodham Clinton, lost.
Here we are, four years later, and many Democrats still argue that Hillary should be president because she collected the most popular votes. Nonsense. A candidate wins the election by collecting the most electoral votes, and that's what Donald Trump did.
To be fair, I have no interest in indicting the entire profession. I've met my share of journalists who approach every assignment with an open mind, and don't allow their bias to slant their reporting. I understand why the president gets angry with them — there is a ton of fake news — though I don't entirely agree with him that the mainstream media are the "Enemy of the People."
Too many reporters, however, search only for evidence to back up the premise they begin with, and if finding it requires them to rely on anonymous sources or ignore irrefutable facts on the opposite side, so be it. The way they see it, any tactics, no matter how unethical, can be justified if they might lead to the downfall of the man they despise.
No president, at least in modern times, has been treated with more disrespect than Donald Trump.
Reporters claim that all they are interested in is telling the truth. Give me a break. They write their story first,act as judge and jury, and worry about the truth later. When they make a mistake, which is too often the case, good luck getting them to admit it.
The story is on the front page, impossible to miss. The correction is buried on an inside page-if it's there at all.
I can't tell you how many times I'd be sitting at my desk right outside the Oval Office and see "breaking news" about the president or somebody else in the administration on the screen and think, Oh, my God, I can't believe this is happening, only to find out from others in the West Wing that the report was a total fabrication.
Yet if someone like myself, who worked in the West Wing, could be misled that easily, what about the people outside of Washington who wouldn't be able to separate fact from fiction?
What bothered me more than anything was the constant stories that the president was angry the whole day, berating his aides. I had been with him from practically the moment he stepped into the Oval Office, and I can assure you that wasn't the case. Where the media came up with lies like that was beyond me.
So you can understand why I might not have been interested in having dinner with those "truth tellers."
Besides, I was enjoying a much-needed rest on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, lounging by the pool at the president's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, roughly an hour from New York. Bedminster had been our home for the prior nine days. I wrote some emails, splashed around in the pool, soaked up the summer sun, and downed a few drinks.
The president always urged the staff to take advantage of the facilities at his properties once our work was done. We didn't need much convincing.
I was in a tremendous mood. Our trip in mid-August 2019 couldn't have gone any more smoothly.
The president was happy. The first lady was happy. The senior staff was happy. As his executive assistant-think Mrs. Landingham from The West Wing-I took a great deal of pride in what we accomplished. I was aware of how easily it could have gone the other way.
Donald Trump, you see, never looks forward to being away from the White House for more than a couple of days. He is frustrated by the image of him that has been spread by the press-shocking, I know-that he doesn't work very hard. Add that to its long list of lies. He works extremely hard. I'll go as far as to say that he has more energy than everyone else in the West Wing. We could barely keep up with him.
The president often starts his workday about 6:00 a.m. — he typically sleeps for only four or five hours — and some nights, he doesn't get off the phone until around midnight. He believes in returning everyone's call, and I mean everyone. I can't imagine there has been anyone in that office who has made himself more available.
Furthermore, he adores everything about the White House. Which is why it is outrageous that people suggest he doesn't enjoy being president. He enjoys it very much.
This is someone who didn't need the job, who took it on only because he loves his country and believed he was the right man to turn things around. He could have gone on as the celeb-rity he had been for much of his adult life, admired for the most part, and no one would have given it a second thought.
Instead, he ran for president, the most demanding job in the world, against overwhelming odds and put his legacy on the line.
The history of the institution itself is never lost on him. When he had a guest in the Oval Office, he often told me,"Madeleine. get the picture of John-John." He was referring to the famous photo from the early 1960s of President John F. Kennedy's two-year-old son, John-John, playing under the Resolute Desk.
"This is the same desk," President Trump would proceed to tell his guest. "Come, let's take a picture behind it."
On more than a few occasions, when some of the staff were staying a little later than usual, the president would usher us into the Oval Office. "Look around," he'd tell us."Look where we are. How incredible is this? We are standing in the Oval Office!"
I can't overstate how much moments like that meant to me. My colleagues and I would get so wrapped up in our day-to-day responsibilities, we would forget where we were and how essen-tial our work was. Incredibly, it was our boss, the president of the United States, who had to be the one to remind us.
He always appreciated how fortunate he was to be a part of history. I will never forget the first time the president rode on Marine One, the presidential helicopter
From my office overlooking the Rose Garden, I watched him as he watched the helicopter land and then as he made his way from the Oval Office and across the South Lawn to Marine One.
He stopped in front of the marine who was standing guard by the helicopter and gave the most respectful salute. Donald Trump had been in many helicopters-and private planes, for that matter-but that look of reverence in his eyes told me this time was different.
For the August trip to Bedminster, we needed to be as per-suasive as ever in order to get him to agree to it. He didn't want to go for long, certainly not ten days. In the summer of 2017, when the West Wing underwent a much-needed renovation, he had gone to his club for two weeks and been destroyed by the media. They had suggested he was merely taking a vacation, and nothing could have been further from the truth. I'm not even sure the word vacation is in Donald Trump's vocabulary.
Besides, every president gets out of Washington in August for a week or longer. The city all but shuts down. Congress is out of session, and the weather is just miserable. President Barack
