Olivia Nuzzi has written a wonderful profile on Hope Hicks focusing on her decision to resign from her positions in the White House. It’s filled with juicy palace intrigue but it doesn’t directly address what its headline promises to tell us, which is what Hicks might know that actually matters. There are probably many things of importance that she doesn’t know, mainly because they pre-date her time working side-by-side with Donald Trump. But even in those areas, she must have learned how the president and his inner circle view much of that history and many of those controversies. After all, she hasn’t just been within earshot of the president for most of the last three years, she’s actually controlled his email account.
As you go through Nuzzi’s profile, it might be tempting to feel sympathy for Hicks. She didn’t put a lot of thought into joining Trump’s political campaign, merely taking the invitation as an opportunity to do something interesting for a year or so. Unlike most of Trump’s entourage, she hasn’t treated everyone she interacts with as a means to an end, or left a swath of discredited lies and hurt feelings from her interactions with the press. She was carved up in the White House by some of the most unsympathetic people you will ever find, including Trump allies too damaged to actually work there and private investigators working for the British tabloid press.
But, in the end, there are two things about Hicks that really aren’t forgivable. The first is her taste in people and judgement of character.
She had made her choices knowingly, even if she couldn’t know where they’d lead her. But she believed Trump was a good person, and she was angered that his critics didn’t seem open to the parts of his personality that would lead them to believe the same. To Hicks, the president’s policies were secondary considerations — the man himself came first. And at the end of the day, she really liked him. “Part of it is because of the proximity,” a source close to her said, “part of it is human nature.”
And the other is her unwavering loyalty to a man who clearly doesn’t deserve it instead of to a nation that hopefully does.
“She is the one person he thinks is totally on his side. And I happen to think that he’s right,” the source who meets regularly with the president told me…
…The source added, “Hope’s never gonna write the memoir. She has no political aspirations. She doesn’t particularly like politics. She’s loyal to Mr. Trump.”
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but Donald Trump is pretty close to the worst person in America. To find worse, you need to visit our many fine penitentiaries and look for the less savory characters. You’ll want to talk to the folks who cheated little old ladies out of their retirement money or the ones who used armies of lawyers to destroy small contractors and intimidate women whom they’d sexually assaulted. Ideally, you’ll be looking for someone who never once laughed in their entire lives unless it was at someone else’s expense. You’ll want to find someone who is more boastful, narcissistic and vindictive than anyone you’ve ever met or even read about. I could go on in this vein for a long time, but you get the point. If Hope Hicks thinks that Donald Trump is a good person and that we just can’t see it, then there’s clearly something seriously wrong with her. If she hasn’t learned otherwise after serving the man for three years, and she’s still more loyal to him than to her country, then it’s impossible to have sympathy for her.
Maybe, simply by not being next to Trump to keep him from self-destructing, she’ll bring this presidency down and put a halt to our long national nightmare, but a more admirable path would be to march down to Robert Mueller’s shop and tell him what he needs to know.
Until then, I don’t and won’t feel sorry for her. And if we enter into a full-blown constitutional or military crisis and Hicks is still on Trump’s side, she’ll be responsible for that and suffer the judgment of history.
Look at the wife-beater she was dating. This is not a well individual.
And her affair with the skeevy Corey Lewandowski before that.
This was also important to add, not only does she work for a scumbag but she is engaged in a relationship with another one who physically abused the last two women he married. She knew this, and decided it was worth it anyway (for what reason, I’ll never know).
She will never tell what she knows because, as the article makes clear, she is a true believer in Trump.
To me, this indicates that she is a pretty awful human being herself.
Anyone who now remains loyal to Trump is trying to protect themselves and is just as bad as he is.
Hicks clearly lacks good judgment and probably also is lacking a strong personal code of ethics and morals.
No sympathy here unless she tells all, which I seriously doubt she will.
As part of the inner circle for many years she was there when Trump and his family and his acolytes had private conversations…..when they gossiped, which all people do. When Trump gossips about black people, or brown people, or people who are heavy or don’t fit into a magazine cover appearance (like Hicks does, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence), she absolutely heard some pretty terrible things, and some pretty unacceptable slurs.
Yet she stayed. What type of person stays around people who say terrible and insulting things, and then follow up with hurtful and damaging actions?
Only bad people stay, and only horrible people thrive in such environments. Trump does not, and never will, collect decent people.
He only collects horrible ones.
.
I’m a little confused; one of the writers at Balloon Juice describes Nuzzi as a “professional character assassin.” I’ve seen her speak on TV, although I’m not all that familiar with her writing, and was surprised at that description. Is that true? Is that any reason to think her article is less valuable? I’m not arguing, I’m asking.
Apparently, her parents are both Democrats so her bizarre attachment to this monster not to mention Rob the wife beater is simply a real character problem she has. Some people are psychological enablers of bad behavior on the part of those they are in relationships with whether romantic or psycho-political.
I hope she gets help before her life is totally ruined. She’s only 29.
Is too cliché to declare she’s just another vapid, over-privileged person lured by the opportunity for easy, early life “success” by latching onto seemingly wealth and powerful people that bestow wealth and power to anyone who simply serve with loyalty?
How the hell do you think most under-40 people reach the executive suite or rise with criminal oligarchs (but I repeat myself)? Merit?!?
As the NYT has shown with its endless Trump voter jerk off fests, remaining the Loyal Trumpist! (TM) is what the media is buying, therefore it’s Hopes new career.
There is nothing “wonderful” about this article. Nothing. A puff piece on an airhead. Most of your links are informative and interesting. This was the opposite.
It is only her unearned privilege as a white woman who conforms to culturally accepted beauty standards that you don’t immediately lump her in with everyone else aboard Air Force One who conspired to obstruct justice with respect to the Trump Tower meeting.
Fucking A — 100% correct. See my comment above (or below; they move around mysteriously).
It’s unlikely this person possesses the requisite moral understanding to inform what she “should” do.
That’s the whole problem here–our TrumperGate has no John Dean.
Kinda surprising there is this much honor among the Trump Thieves….
You write:
Not so surprising once you consider what kind of people are really involved with the upper echelons of TrumpWorld. (See Booman’s recent post “My Movie Script on Felix Sater” if you not already sees it.)
It’s not “honor”…it’s fear!!! These people make the CIA look like an Ivy League gentleman’s club.
AG
All this analysis! She’s just another fucking nitwit from the fringes of the fashion/publicity/promotion world, which is where so many presentable female nitwits from upper-middle-class suburban families who majored in “communication” end up.
She was working for Ivanka’s clothing line, right? And Trump liked her because she’s represents his ideals of what all women should be like: pretty and submissive, and loyal, and quiet.
Remember the 2016 article where the reporter was trying to profile her, and couldn’t get her on the record, and kept saying that the press secretary for the candidate should be available to the press…and finally the interview happened and it was in Trump’s office, with Trump talking loudly about how great she was while Hicks sat there silently? That’s all you need to know about her. She’s a fucking ornament.
Why are we supposed to even care about or empathize with Hope Hicks?
Her choice in men explains why she thinks Trump is a good man. And her leaving when and the way she did speaks more to self preservation than any hint of a desire to do the right thing.
Eff Hicks and the horse she rode in on.
Agree with comments so far.
Hope Hicks appears to be a “pretty face,” who was able to idolize Trump for reasons unknown but likely because she got paid well enough to do whatever TF it was she did. I don’t even want to think about that too much. Puke.
That this person CLEARLY lacks any morals, values, good judgement, intelligence, etc, should be more than obvious. Not just her “loyalty” to Trump (which is likely rooted in CYA), but the fact that she chooses known wife-beaters for her boyfriends.
This is not a reliable person, nor does she intend to reveal anything that will in any way cause HERSELF any harm. Whether she idolizes Trump as much as she says she does… or whether it’s just a way to futher her “career” (as some sort of pretty vapid dumb face that hangs around powerful MEN)… who cares.
We’ll hear nothing of any value from this compromised nitwit. I have zero sympathy for her. ICK.
. . . on his side” per “the source”:
Ergo, not “totally on his side”: Melania. Ivanka. Junior. Eric The Dunce. Ivana. Kellyanne(sp?). Etc.
“if we enter into a full-blown constitutional or military crisis and Hicks is still on Trump’s side, she’ll be responsible for that and suffer the judgment of history. “
And that’s just what I feel about all his voters, too …