Madeleine Westerhout didn’t want Donald Trump to be the Republican Party’s nominee. She didn’t vote for him in the general election. But after getting to meet the president-elect, she began to question whether she had been wrong about him.
“Honestly, my very first interaction with him was so positive, that I thought, ‘Wow, I definitely misjudged him, and I need to be more careful about what I believe because I think that not everything the press says is absolutely accurate,'” the 29-year-old former White House official told the Washington Examiner in an interview on Monday.
That meeting happened after Trump became the nominee in November 2016. Westerhout was working for the Republican National Committee at the time as the assistant to the committee’s chief of staff, Katie Walsh. Walsh and Reince Priebus, then the chairman of the RNC, went to meet with Trump in New York City. As she stood in the back of the room, waiting patiently to be needed, Trump asked her and another aide to come sit down with the rest of the group. She was shocked.
Over the next couple of months, Westerhout became famous as the “greeter girl” who would escort VIPs from the lobby of Trump Tower up the elevators to meet the president-elect. She went on to become the president’s executive assistant and the director of Oval Office operations, but her White House employment was abruptly cut short in August 2019 when Westerhout was asked to resign after details leaked about an off-the-record dinner conversation with reporters in which she made personal comments about the president’s family.
A year later, Westerhout has written a book that tells her side of the story, Off the Record: My dream job at the White House, How I Lost It, and What I Learned, which went on sale on Tuesday.
While specifics about the dinner that cost Westerhout her job have been reported, Westerhout claims to be unable to confirm exactly what she did or did not say because she was drinking that night. Still, Westerhout said she takes full responsibility for her actions.
Politico reported Westerhout told reporters she was closer to the president than his daughters and that the president didn’t like to be seen in photos with his youngest daughter Tiffany because he thought she was overweight. Westerhout wrote in her book, “To blame it completely on the alcohol is shirking my responsibility, and I refuse to do that. No matter what state I was in that night, I made the comments.”
Westerhout said she does not believe these things to be true, but if they were, it wouldn’t be the first time the president has made inappropriate comments about a woman’s weight or appearance.
In 2016, Trump accused a former Miss Universe winner of “gaining a massive amount of weight.” In an interview with Rolling Stone, Trump said of then-presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
When asked about instances such as these, Westerhout told the Washington Examiner, “The thing about President Trump is that he is not perfect, but he’s never claimed to be perfect. The American people knew exactly what they were getting when they voted for him or didn’t vote for him.”
Throughout the course of the interview, Westerhout was unfailingly on message. She supports the president and his agenda.
After Westerhout resigned, the president tweeted, “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. She called me yesterday to apologize, had a bad night. I fully understood and forgave her! I love Tiffany, doing great!”
Westerhout said she never signed a confidentiality agreement. She said she believes Trump felt the need to send an implicit threat because he had been “burned” so many times before by other former employees.
Westerhout said she’s spoken twice with the president since she left the administration: once to tell him that she was publishing a book and, more recently, to inform him that she had not voted for him. Trump was “very gracious, just like I knew he would be. He gets it. He understands how the media portrays him,” she recalled of her second conversation.
Many members of the Trump administration who have since left their posts have written tell-all books about its inner workings. Westerhout said, “There’s not enough money in the world for me to sit down and lie. This is my tell-all. This is the truth.”
Trump appeared to approve when he tweeted on Tuesday that Westerhout’s memoir is not one of the “Fake Books and garbage” written about him.
“It’s really nice to see a very smart and already wise young woman write an honest depiction of what went on at the White House during some extremely interesting and important times,” he tweeted. “So many good stories by someone who, unlike most other so called writers, was actually there, and a part of the action — of which there was plenty. Go buy this book, a job well done!”
Westerhout insisted her book isn’t part of a plot to get her old job back, and she said she has “no expectations of going back to the White House.” As for her future plans, Westerhout said she will spend the next couple of months promoting the book and spending time with family, but after that, she’s open to the possibilities.
Westerhout said she wants to use her book to inspire others in situations similar to the one she found herself in. “Don’t let one mistake define you. I think every mistake is an opportunity for a lesson to be learned,” she advised.
In closing her book, Westerhout reflected on the day staff from the White House came to her apartment to deliver her personal belongings and take back what belonged to the administration, including a pin she wore that allowed her access to the president.
“That day, I felt as though they had taken everything from me, but I was wrong,” she said. “No one will ever be able to take away the memories I have of serving our country and a president I love and admire. Those memories are mine, and I will cherish them forever.”
