Honey please
Here is a text message from a future United States ambassador, punctuation hers: “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today.”
It came with a prayer-hands emoji and a PDF of bill payment instructions from American Express. Per The Wall Street Journal, the sender was Kimberly Guilfoyle. The date was July 3, 2025. Her confirmation hearing as ambassador to Greece was July 9.
The amount was $100,000. The pitch for wiring it straight to the card company, sent on Signal: “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express.”
Then one more word. “Please.”
You have heard of a paper trail. This was a request to skip the paper.
The donor and the deal
The man on the other end was Eric Deters, a former Kentucky congressional candidate, ex-radio host, and Donald Trump superfan who liked to say he was “Trump today, Trump tomorrow, Trump forever.”
Deters told the Journal he paid Guilfoyle $300,000 over the years to speak at his Freedom Fest events, plus $200,000 in speaking fees to Donald Trump Jr., her former fiancé, and $100,000 to Eric Trump. He also gave $125,000 to a pro-Trump PAC in 2022, per FEC records cited by the Journal.
After the 2024 election, he wanted things. Per the Journal and Deters:
- Help with a tax fight. The IRS was questioning a deduction he took in 2020, and he wanted to talk to the incoming IRS commissioner.
- A Justice Department push to extradite an Ohio doctor who fled to Pakistan after fraud charges.
- A DOJ investigation into an insurer that is suing him.
- A Tucker Carlson interview. He told her he would pay her $1 million if she landed it.
He had promised payments of as much as $1 million if she came through. And Guilfoyle, per the messages, offered her sway. She forwarded him the notes she sent to the new IRS chief. She updated him on lobbying the Justice Department on his behalf.
Her own sales pitch, in writing: “Every secretary of you know defense, transportation, treasury commerce IRS commissioner everyone gets right back to me.” Then she remembered the FBI director, misspelling him: “Oh yeah, l’m forgetting cash Patel.” An FBI spokesman told the Journal she did not lobby Kash Patel.
Tucker Carlson told the Journal he had never heard of Deters. His review: “A million dollars for a podcast appearance? Isn’t she the ambassador to Greece? This is completely nuts.”
When Tucker Carlson is the voice of restraint, the story has left the building.
Stop papering this
The best part is that she knew how it looked. The Journal quotes her telling Deters, again and again, to stop putting money talk in writing.
“Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things.”
“Do not say we have any arrangement.”
“What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing.”
In June 2025, Deters sent her a photo of a printed memo: “I have paid you $300,000 over the years. As of this memo, I have not received one favor. I am not naive or a sucker. I need results.”
Her reply: stop papering, “It’s really dangerous.”
That same month, she sent a congratulatory note to newly confirmed IRS Commissioner Billy Long, attaching Deters’ letter about his tax dispute. “Don Jr. and I are very close with Eric Deters and his wife,” she wrote. Long wrote her back, she told Deters.
Billy Long, official portrait as IRS commissioner, 2025. Guilfoyle forwarded him a donor’s tax dispute. Credit: U.S. Internal Revenue Service, public domain.
The IRS commissioner’s inbox is not supposed to have a VIP lane. Apparently it has a concierge.
A week later came the Amex instructions and two missed calls. Deters said no: “I can’t do this without getting a divorce.” Her answer: “I’ve been calling you for over a week straight. You could be here meeting with Billy Long.”
Long is now the U.S. ambassador to Iceland. His embassy referred questions to the State Department, which did not answer the Journal.
The other side of the story
Fair is fair, so here is hers. Guilfoyle’s lawyer, Jesse Binnall, told the Journal she disputes the authenticity of the messages but declined to give specifics. He said she had been paid to speak at events before her nomination and “was owed a balance for traveling to and supporting these patriotic events.” Deters says he did not owe her anything. He never wired the money.
Deters is no choirboy, either. Per the Journal, he was banned from an Ohio courthouse in 2020 after threatening online to burn it down, and Kentucky’s bar suspended him twice. He now calls himself “a legal outlaw.” His complaint about her, per the Journal: “she never came through on anything.”
So consider the possibility that nobody here was buying real influence. That would make it a donor paying for the feeling of access, and an ambassador-designate selling it. Hold that thought. It comes back.
The red costume: fully vetted, by the dozen
If you are the America First voter who thought this crowd was coming to clean house, this section is for you.
The U.S. Embassy says Guilfoyle “was fully vetted by the bipartisan Senate Foreign Relations committee and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.” Technically true. Per NBC News, she was confirmed on September 18, 2025, as one of 48 nominees approved in a single party-line vote, 51 to 47, right after Republicans changed the rules to confirm nominees in batches. Vetting, now available in bulk.
On Wednesday in Athens, with Guilfoyle seated in front of his podium, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “Our ambassador has been a strong ambassador.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, official portrait, January 2025. In Athens on Wednesday he called Guilfoyle “a strong ambassador.” Credit: U.S. Department of State, public domain.
And the Journal reports that Trump himself grew frustrated with her for soliciting investments from Mar-a-Lago members, complaining that she was supposed to be raising money for him but was raising money for herself. Even the boss thought the side hustle was too much side.
We have been here before. In Not Personally Profiting, it was Jared Kushner‘s volunteer badge and billion-dollar stakes. In Camp Donald, it was the president’s own golf club pitched as a gift to the nation. Same orbit, new franchise in Athens.
The blue costume: the Biden brand and the soap opera ambassador
Democrats, sit down before you stand up.
Last week, Democrats on the House and Senate foreign affairs committees urged the State Department to review Guilfoyle’s conduct, per the Journal. Good. Now remember 2023.
That July, Hunter Biden‘s former business partner Devon Archer testified to House Oversight. Per the AP via PBS, Archer said Hunter put his father on speakerphone around 20 times in 10 years while with associates, though the two “never once spoke about any business dealings.” Rep. Dan Goldman, who represented Democrats in the room, told reporters Archer testified that Hunter sold the “illusion of access” to his father.
That was the defense. Read it again. The Democratic line on Hunter was the same line that would get Guilfoyle off the hook: she was only selling the illusion. You do not get to call it a scandal in Athens and a nothingburger when the last name is Biden.
And ambassadorships for donors? That is a bipartisan heirloom. In 2014, Colleen Bell, a producer of “The Bold and the Beautiful” who bundled an estimated $2.1 million for Barack Obama‘s reelection, was asked by Sen. John McCain to name America’s strategic interests in Hungary. After her answer, McCain said, “Great answer,” per NBC News. She was confirmed anyway. So was Obama fundraiser Noah Mamet, who admitted he had never visited Argentina, where he was headed as ambassador.
Colleen Bell, official State Department portrait as ambassador to Hungary, 2014. Credit: U.S. Department of State, public domain.
The diplomats’ union, AFSA, told NPR that Obama, who once said he wanted to rely more on career diplomats, had named a higher share of political appointees than his predecessors. Former ambassador Ronald Neumann put it plainly: “There is a law, which both parties ignore, about ambassadors needing to be qualified.”
Both parties ignore it. That is the only bipartisan vote in town.
Both costumes
Here is the difference, and it matters. Nothing in the record we read shows Colleen Bell texting a donor for a credit card payment. The Guilfoyle messages, if they are authentic, describe something rawer: a nominee asking a man with business before the government for six figures, routed so it “won’t show up anywhere,” while she worked his asks with the IRS and the Justice Department.
But the machine underneath is the same one both parties keep running. Raise the money, get the post. Sell the closeness, deny the deal. When it is the other team, it is corruption. When it is yours, it is an illusion of access, or a distinguished private sector career.
You do not need a costume for this one. You need a rule that says ambassadors are diplomats, not donor-relations staff. Call your senators and ask which of them will vote for it, and then watch both parties suddenly get very busy.
Receipts
- The Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2026. The “Honey please” and Amex messages, the July 3 and July 9, 2025 dates, Deters’ asks and payments, the “papering” quotes, the Billy Long note, the Carlson quote, Trump’s frustration, the Binnall and embassy responses, Rubio in Athens, and the Democrats’ review request.
- NBC News, September 18, 2025. Guilfoyle confirmed in a bloc of 48 nominees, 51 to 47, after the rules change.
- AP via PBS NewsHour, July 31, 2023. Archer’s testimony, the speakerphone calls, and Goldman’s “illusion of access” summary.
- NBC News, December 3, 2014. Colleen Bell’s bundling, McCain’s “Great answer,” and Noah Mamet’s Argentina admission.
- NPR, February 12, 2014. AFSA on Obama’s political appointees and Neumann’s quote.
- Hypocrisy Democracy, Not Personally Profiting and Camp Donald. Earlier pieces on the Trump family’s business-and-government overlap.
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Originally published on Substack.