Michael Wolff, chronicling the aftermath of the firing of FBI director and the smashup over revelations of the nefarious Trump Tower Meeting in June 2016, wrote this account: “Bannon, who continued to defend (attorney General) Sessions, and who believed that he had militantly—indeed with scathing attacks on the Jarvankas (Jared Kusher and Ivanka Trump as they were known in the White House) for their stupidity—walled himself off from the Comey Smashup, was now suddenly getting calls from reporters with leaks that painted him as an engaged participant in the Comey Decision.
In a furious phone call to Hicks, Bannon blamed the leaks on her. In time, he had come to see the twenty-eight-year-old as nothing more than a hapless presidential enabler and poor-fish Jarvanka flunky—and he believed she had now deeply implicated herself in the entire disaster by participating in the Air Force One meeting.”
This was the meeting, one may recall, in which as the story of the Trump Tower meeting was breaking, the Trump Team returning from a European conference aboard Air Force One, concocted the story –reportedly over the objection of Jared and Ivanka—composed by Trump himself that the meeting was about the adoption of Russian children.
“The next day, with more inquiries coming from reporters, he confronted Hicks inside the cabinet room, accusing her of doing Jared and Ivanka's dirty work. The face-off quickly escalated into an existential confrontation between the two sides of the White House—two sides on a total war footing.
“You don't know what you're doing,” shouted a livid Bannon at Hicks, demanding to know who she worked for, the White House or Jared and Ivanka. “You don't know how much trouble you are in,” he screamed, telling her that if she didn't get a lawyer he would call her father and tell him he had better get one “You are Dumb as a Stone!” Moving from the cabinet room across the open area into the president's earshot, 'a loud, scary, clearly threatening' Bannon, in the Jarvanka telling, yelled, 'I am going to fuck you and your little group!' with a baffled president plaintively wanting to know, 'what's going on?”'. (1) Hicks then ran, according to the Jarvanka account from the room 'visibly terrified' and hysterically sobbing. (2)
Indeed, Hicks, then twenty-six had been the campaign's first hire. Working through the ranks first as a model for an agency working to promote Ivanka's clothes, jewelry, and cosmetics lines, she was hired first by Ivanka and then her father. Over time she became tRUMP's closest confidant. Marginalized by the Priebus faction, and the Bannon faction, Trump would more than occasionally cast about the room asking “Where's Hope?.”
As attrition quickly thinned the ranks, Hope began to rise in stature, finally replacing the short-lived and quickly reviled Scaramucci as communications director. It was her job to interpret media coverage in as positive a light as possible and she was accordingly seen as a tempering presence in a chaotic White House, whose prime function was to sooth the beast. In the 'adult day care center' that Senator Corker has described this White House, Hope Hicks was viewed as the primary attendant.
After testifying for eight long hours in a closed-door session before the House Intelligence Committee, Hope Hicks announced her resignation.
The White House, of course, put a positive spin on her departure—you know the usual pap about seeking new challenges, new horizons beckon, family matters. It is all rubbish. She had been previously questioned by Robert Mueller
Hicks had been 'present at creation'. She has been by the side of 'The Donald' from before he launched his campaign, privy to every meeting, every communication. As Bannon so rightly pointed out, the press releases posing false narratives, have her fingerprints all over them. She is in legal jeopardy and she and her family may never have the resources it will take to navigate the troubled waters in which she has inadvertently fallen.
How was Hope to know that this is what happens when one reaches proximity to the Tar Baby? One finds oneself immediately soiled, if not defiled, by the experience. Perhaps she should have consulted his ex-wives, contractors who have done business with him, or virtually anyone else that he has come in contact with and are no longer hanging about. No one, it is clear, emerges unsullied and this poses a problem not only for the likes of Hope Hicks, in the aftermath, but for anyone now contemplating joining an administration in which the rats are now scurrying about the decks frantically searching for means to jump ship.
'an Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”
Impeach and Imprison
_____________
- Wolff, Michael. “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” Henry Holt and
Company. 2018. Pages 261-262
- Ibid. page 262
- Ibid page 26
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