Kimberly Guilfoyle in Athens is John Kiriakou’s assessment of the American ambassadorship to Greece, delivered on the DeProgram programme in September 2025 after a Greek viewer asked him for an honest opinion. Offered the chance to duck it, he refused: “No, I want to be honest.”[1]
Why he thinks she got it
Kiriakou begins with his own disposition — “I have never been a Kimberly Guilfoyle fan” — and then gives a reason for the appointment that has nothing to do with Greece: “the reason why she got an ambassadorship, any ambassadorship, is because Donald Trump Jr. broke up with her and they didn’t want her around to cause trouble in his next relationship. It’s the sad truth. And so they decided, ah, we’ll give her an ambassadorship and she’ll be out for the next three years.”[1]
The parallel
He treats the manoeuvre as a recognised technique, and reaches for Saddam Hussein to name it. “If there was anybody that was particularly popular, especially if they were a military officer — if you became a general and you made some real wins on the battlefield against the Iranians, Saddam’s going to be afraid of you, that you’re going to try to overthrow him and make yourself president. So he made you ambassador to the Philippines.”[2]
Applied to the case at hand: “So they gave Kimberly Guilfoyle this job just to get her out. Now, it just happened to be in Greece.”[3]
His own stake in it
Kiriakou states his interest plainly: “as a Greek American, as a Greek — I’m a Greek citizen — I thought, oh, this is not going to be good.”[3] His view of the post itself is that it is a coveted one, with a magnificent ambassador’s residence.[4]
The credit he gives her
Having set out the objections, he then argues against his own first reaction. “I’ve watched Kimberly Guilfoyle very closely as she has gone through the process — not just her Senate hearings, although I watched those as well. I watched every interview that she has given. And I’ve got to give her credit. She has tried so hard to come down positively in the eyes of the Greeks. She has said all the right things.”[5]
The Greek and Greek-American press, which he reads — he names Kathimerini and the English-language National Herald — took the opposite view, calling it a terrible appointment obtained only through closeness to the president.[6]
Kiriakou’s own conclusion splits the difference. She is “an attorney, a former assistant US attorney”, she has the president’s ear whether or not she remains in the inner circle, and “she’s not an idiot … she’s very politically savvy.”[6][7]
The verdict is comparative and grudging: “It’s only going to be three years. We could have done worse.”[8]
The day before she arrived
On 31 October 2025, with Guilfoyle due in Athens the following day, Kiriakou set out the split in reaction: “the Greek media, at least, is very excited about this. I will say that the Greek American press is not excited about this.”[9]
He framed the appointment against a pattern he says he cannot explain. “For reasons that I will never understand, Donald Trump seems to love Greece, and Greece seems to love Donald Trump” — and it has held across every Greek government of the Trump years, “it doesn’t matter if Mitsotakis is the prime minister or if there’s a socialist or Eurocommunist prime minister.”[9][10]
Against that, Kiriakou says, the Greek preference between a career diplomat and a political appointee is settled: “they like it when the ambassador has a direct line to the president.” His own summary weighs the two facts without reconciling them: “would I have chosen Kimberly Guilfoyle? Of course not. But she is a practiced seasoned attorney, former US attorney or assistant US attorney, and she’s got a direct line to Trump. So, we’ll see how the next 3 years go.”[10][11]