Newsom reacts to Guilfoyle removal: asked on Saturday in Exeter, New Hampshire, for his reaction to his ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle being pushed out as U.S. ambassador to Greece, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he did not know enough about it, had not talked to her in a while, and wished her the best — “It’s unfortunate” — in an eleven-second answer that declined every invitation to say more.
Exeter, N.H. / The pile-on was available. The governor declined it in eleven seconds
EXETER, N.H. — The question was unavoidable, and the reporter asked it plainly: “Recently, your ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle was involved in a scandal and pushed out of her ambassadorship. Could you please share what your reaction was to that news?” Newsom paused, and gave the shortest answer of his New Hampshire swing: “I don’t know enough about it. I haven’t talked to her in a while, and I just wish her the best, and I don’t have much, honestly, much more to say on it. It’s unfortunate.” Then he moved on. The exchange, filmed by CBS News at Saturday’s rally for New Hampshire Democrats, is the governor’s first on-camera response since Guilfoyle’s removal on Tuesday — and its restraint is the story. Newsom is a likely 2028 presidential contender campaigning in the state that fights to hold the first primary; Guilfoyle is his ex-wife, a former Fox News host, Donald Trump Jr.’s former fiancée, and, until this week, the U.S. ambassador to Greece. Every incentive of modern politics pointed toward a quotable jab. He offered a condolence instead.
Why he was in New Hampshire
Newsom headlined a Saturday tour that ran from an Exeter rally to a Nashua field office, stumping for Senate nominee Chris Pappas, gubernatorial nominee Cinde Warmington and House candidate Stefany Shaheen, with his political operation having steered more than $526,000 to New Hampshire Democrats. The backdrop behind him as he took questions was a wall of their campaign signs — the visual grammar of an early 2028 audition as much as a midterm favour. New Hampshire’s place at the front of the presidential calendar makes its activists, county chairs and reporters a constituency no ambitious Democrat skips, and Newsom’s team has never hidden the maths. That is part of why Saturday’s eleven seconds travelled: this was not a governor ambushed on a rope line in Sacramento. It was a politician who had flown across the country to be scrutinised, choosing his words in full knowledge that the Guilfoyle question was coming and that whatever he said would be clipped, shared and graded.
How Guilfoyle fell
The removal itself took four days. On Monday, President Trump said he was considering firing Guilfoyle — “We’re not happy.” On Tuesday, at the debut briefing of his new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, the White House confirmed the decision: “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.” Trump, asked about it the same day, kept a careful distance: “She was doing a good job, but we didn’t like what we were reading.” He also minimised the relationship, saying Guilfoyle had dated his son “a long time ago” and “wasn’t a member of my family” — this about a woman who was engaged to Donald Trump Jr. for four years and whom Trump himself nominated to Athens in December 2024, weeks after the engagement ended. The Senate confirmed her in September 2025. Our earlier coverage has the full chronology: Guilfoyle resigns as ambassador to Greece and Trump considering firing Guilfoyle.
The allegations — and her denial
What the president was “reading” was a run of reports, led by the Wall Street Journal, alleging — and the word matters, because none of it has been proven — that Guilfoyle sold access and sought money, gifts and favours in and around her diplomatic role. The most specific claim involves Republican donor Eric Deters, who says Guilfoyle texted him days before her 2025 confirmation hearing asking him to pay her $100,000 American Express bill. Her lawyer, Jesse Binnall, disputes the authenticity of the messages and says any money involved was owed for speaking and consulting work; he has said any implication of wrongdoing by the ambassador is “unsupported.” Other reports alleged she threatened to use U.S. influence to undermine the Greek government, and NBC News and CNN reported — citing unnamed sources — that the State Department’s inspector general had opened an investigation; the inspector general’s office declines to confirm or deny investigations. Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Rep. Gregory Meeks, had called for a review of her conduct and her removal if the allegations were substantiated. The donor-text reporting is examined in our earlier report: Guilfoyle, the $100K donor texts and Rubio.
Guilfoyle answered on X on Tuesday, in full: “These allegations are false, and I intend to vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.” And: “While my time as Ambassador may be coming to an end, my commitment to President Trump, the America First movement, and the country I love will never end.” That denial stands alongside the allegations in every account of this episode, including this one: she has not been charged with anything, the texts’ authenticity is contested by her own lawyer, and the investigation she is reported to face has not been confirmed by the office said to be running it.
The other reactions — including the line that was never Newsom’s
If Newsom’s answer was the week’s most restrained, the administration’s own voices supplied the range around it. Vice President JD Vance, asked on Friday, counselled patience with an edge: “Let’s actually see what the facts are. Let’s see what the truth is. And obviously, if there was something bad that happened, then people have to suffer consequences for it.” Readers who have seen that last sentence circulating online attributed to Newsom should know it was Vance’s — the governor said nothing like it on Saturday, or at any point this week. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in Athens days before the fall, first defended Guilfoyle’s performance — “a strong ambassador” — then declined to engage with the reports at a press conference against the backdrop of the Acropolis, and was visibly angry when pressed again on the tarmac. The sequence matters for Saturday’s scene in Exeter: by the time Newsom was asked, every other principal had already performed some version of loyalty, anger or distance. He chose a fourth register — personal, brief and closed.
A marriage that keeps re-entering politics
The personal history underneath the question is two decades deep. Guilfoyle, then a San Francisco prosecutor, married Newsom in 2001 after they met through his business partner Billy Getty; as he rose to the mayor’s office they were dubbed “the New Kennedys.” The marriage ended in 2006, during his first term; his 2026 memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry,” describes the divorce as amicable. Their public relationship since has been conducted mostly at a distance and occasionally in acid: in 2023, Newsom said she was a “different person” who had “fallen prey” to the culture at Fox News; she replied that he was “unrecognizable” and had “fallen prey” to the “radical left.” Since then she has been a fixture of Trump’s movement and he of its opposition, which is precisely why a scandal touching her was always going to be routed to him at the first available microphone — and why his answer had clearly been thought about before the question was asked. “I haven’t talked to her in a while” is both a factual statement and a boundary, drawn in public, in the politest available terms.
Why restraint was the strategy
Analysis: three audiences heard Saturday’s answer, and it was calibrated for each. For New Hampshire Democrats, whose goodwill he was there to bank, it modelled the discipline of a national candidate — no gloating over a woman’s professional collapse, no headline that writes itself as cruelty. For the general electorate, it drew a contrast his team draws constantly: chaos and score-settling on one side, composure on the other. And for Guilfoyle herself — and the Trump-world audience watching for his reaction — it offered nothing to answer, nothing to feud with, no second day of story. The risks of the alternative are easy to price. A jab would have dominated coverage of his New Hampshire swing, displaced the candidates he came to promote, and handed his critics a “kicking her while she’s down” frame with his ex-wife’s name in it. The cost of restraint, by comparison, is one news cycle of stories like this one, noting that he declined. His operation’s wider week underlines the choice: the same press shop that watched its own spokesperson drama unfold in Washington — Zacharia, who announced Guilfoyle’s removal on Tuesday, was herself out by Friday, as we reported in the Zacharia story — is a standing exhibit in what undisciplined communication costs. Newsom’s eleven seconds were the opposite exhibit.
What happens next
For Guilfoyle, the open questions are legal and factual rather than political: whether the reported inspector-general review exists and what it finds, whether the disputed texts are ever authenticated in a forum that settles the matter, and whether she mounts the vigorous defence she promised — her lawyer has already disputed the core documents. For the administration, Athens is now a vacancy at a strategically significant post — a NATO ally and EU member at the junction of the eastern Mediterranean — requiring a nominee and a Senate confirmation, at a moment when the confirmation calendar is crowded with midterm politics. For Newsom, Saturday established the template: the Guilfoyle question will be asked again, in Iowa and South Carolina and everywhere else the 2028 trail runs, and his answer is now on tape. Eleven seconds, a wish of goodwill, and a full stop. Whether that discipline survives two years of asking is its own story — but in Exeter, at least, the most damaging available quote was the one he refused to give.
Related coverage: Kimberly Guilfoyle resigns as ambassador to Greece · Trump considering firing Guilfoyle as ambassador · Guilfoyle, the $100K donor texts and Rubio
Sources
CBS News, October 17, 2026 — video of Gov. Gavin Newsom taking questions in Exeter, New Hampshire (the question and answer quoted verbatim in this article). C-SPAN, October 17, 2026 — New Hampshire Democratic candidates rally with Gov. Newsom in Exeter. The Daily Letter, October 17, 2026 — Newsom’s New Hampshire swing for Pappas, Warmington and Shaheen and the $526,000 steered to state Democrats. Reuters, USA Today and Fox News, October 13–17, 2026 — the resignation, President Trump’s remarks, Vice President Vance’s remarks, Secretary Rubio’s Athens comments, Sen. Shaheen’s and Rep. Meeks’ review calls, and Guilfoyle’s statement on X. Wall Street Journal reporting, via Reuters and USA Today — the access and $100,000 allegations, attributed as allegations; her lawyer’s dispute is noted in the text.