Trump calls fired ambassador's work 'good,' says he 'didn't like what we were reading'

…(cont) Five days later, on a Tuesday, the White House announced it had asked Guilfoyle to resign, ending what the Guardian called "the diplomatic career of one of Trump's longest-standing political allies." Reporters were told Trump and Secretary of State Rubio were furious over the reports. That same Tuesday, asked about the decision, Trump told the press Guilfoyle "was doing a good job" — and in the next breath explained he was removing her anyway because the administration "didn't like what we were reading." The relationship that helped get her the posting and the sentence that ended it arrived from the same mouth, on the same day.

Guilfoyle has denied the allegations. The denial survives her. It is, for now, traveling alone.

This week The Hill filed the posting's death notice under a headline about plumbing: Guilfoyle's sacking, it wrote, "drains a drop from Trump's overflowing swamp." Penny-ante, in the old word for it. The swamp the posting was supposedly draining is, by the paper's own account, still overflowing; one potato came out, and the water level did not move.

In lieu of flowers, the State Department is asked to publish, in writing, the standard by which an ambassador is chosen, so the next appointment can be checked against something sturdier than a family tree.