Trump’s personal assistant Madeleine Westerhout has left her role abruptly after sharing personal details about the president’s family with reporters during an off-the-record dinner.
According to multiple outlets including the New York Times and CNN, Westerhout, who was with the administration from the beginning and had a desk right in front of the Oval Office, resigned Thursday as executive assistant after Trump found out about the conversation. CNN’s sources say she didn’t indicate that her comments were off the record.
Westerhout, 28, is described by the outlets as Trump’s “gatekeeper.”
“Off-the-record conversations between administration officials and reporters — that happens. Going into personal family details, that seems a bridge too far. These words got out, it got back to the president. This was done very swiftly. She was asked to resign and was gone within a day or so of the president learning what happened,” Associated Press White House reporter Jonathan Lemire said on Friday’s “Morning Joe.”
“I suspect that this would be an issue for any administration, but particularly one that has such an adversarial relationship with the press and is so concerned about leaks, particularly sensitive ones like a family matter,” he continued.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on Westerhout’s departure.