Another Trump-style resignation. Money is involved, as always.

Kimberly Guilfoyle epitomises her world – the MAGA world – if only because of her transformation following plastic surgery: she is unrecognisable when you look at photos from 2001, when she married Gavin Newsom, now the Democratic Governor of California, and magazines dubbed them ‘the new Kennedys’.

Like many others who have passed through Fox News, Guilfoyle became a Trump supporter; she had a relationship with Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son. They were due to marry but remained friends, and so Guilfoyle was appointed US ambassador to Greece – a reward for her wholehearted involvement in the election campaign. Yesterday, her diplomatic “adventure” – so to speak – in Greece came to an end; Guilfoyle resigned after the White House had ordered her to do so several days earlier. The request came directly from her former would-be father-in-law, President Donald Trump, who was busy campaigning for the mid-term elections in Alaska and Tennessee. “I’m not happy,” he said. She complied, and wrote on social media: “I’m leaving, but my loyalty to Trump, to the ‘America First’ movement and to the country I love will never end.”

At the root of this departure, as is almost always the case with Trump supporters, lies money – evidently too much even for Trump. The Wall Street Journal revealed that a major Republican donor had received a text message from Guilfoyle requesting: “Send me a bank transfer of $100,000 immediately”, as she needed to pay off her American Express debt “asap”. In return, Guilfoyle promised to act as his point of contact within the Trump inner circle, his agent in Trumpworld.

This took place just before Guilfoyle was appointed to her diplomatic post. As also reported by the Wall Street Journal, potential conflicts of interest have emerged involving the lobbyist Christos Marafatsos, who became an adviser to Guilfoyle and is said to have pressured her into doing business with gas companies for which he works. These are the very issues for which Trump supporters have lambasted Joe Biden over his son Hunter and his alleged dealings in Ukraine.