Why Are the Male Grifters in Trump’s Orbit Not Getting the Same Media Pile-On as Kimberly Guilfoyle?

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

We’ve been talking about Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Amex bill for two days straight. Pundits are piling on her access grifting and shakedown ventures and, admittedly, Guilfoyle’s brand of fraud is irresistibly juvenile (asking for bribe with prayer hands emoji!) and overt (“everyone gets right back to me,” she promised her mark).

But is Guilfoyle gaining such widespread notice because she is especially corrupt? Or is it because she retains the look of the Fox host she once was–because she was rocking the Mar-a-Lago Face before we knew to call it that? The media’s fascination with her is familiar from its enthrallment to other women in Trump’s orbit who’ve faced scandals. Pam Bondi had her wardrobe dissected. (“The Absolute Worst Outfits Pam Bondi Wore During Her Short Year As Trump’s Attorney General.”) Social media jesters dubbed Kristi Noem “ICE Barbie.” Late night comics have gleefully insinuated that Natalie Harp and Trump are having an affair.

These are not barbs that reporters and internet wags typically throw at men in similar situations.

Just in the past few weeks, we’ve learned of questionable dealings by three other Trump officials. The New York Times reported that Chris LaCivita and James Blair, both advisers in charge of Trump’s political operation, received hundreds of thousands of dollars for consulting work on behalf of a pro-Russian government in the Balkans. And Donald Trump Jr., Guilfoyle’s former fiance, was gifted a wedding celebration worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by a Russian oligarch. The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, has said that Trump has since paid him back–or at least that’s what he said at a press conference by the International Boxing Association, of which he is the president. (Not exactly a source I would take as seriously as Propublica, who broke the story.)

And then there’s Dan Scavino, a man so close to Trump he once served as the oracular channel through which Trump transmitted his Tweets. Now Trump’s deputy chief of staff and still involved with Trump’s social media presence, Scavino has been using his connection to Trump for more than advancing up the career ladder: The Washington Sun reported that Scavino has made between $1 million and $5 million dollars trading Truth Social stock, the very platform that Scavino makes decisions about what to post every day.

These stories don’t come wrapped in exaggerated secondary sex characteristics. I have not seen Scavino compared to GI Joe or LaCivita dragged for wearing the wrong socks. Don Jr., I admit, has seen some razzing for his camo fetish.

We can’t dismiss Guilfoyle’s grift; as our ambassador to Greece, she has damaged our relationship to it. But that’s not even the part of the story that’s attracted the most attention. Instead, it’s the Amex bill.

No matter how you slice it, Guilfoyle is a smaller story compared to those involving Blair, LeCivita, and Trump Jr., all of which entangle men just one degree of separation from the president in the often-deadly internal politics of Putin’s Russia. Ironically, Trump himself seems more aware of how this looks — posting on Truth Social (reportedly written by Harp) that the two advisors were merely that and he would ask them “and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately.” But the media’s eyes are turned elsewhere.

Guilfoyle might be a femme fatale, while the men conducting far more consequential business don’t look the part. That makes their corruption easier to overlook.

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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