First came Sean Spicer by default. Mike Dubke, the professional who never quite put his stamp on the White House, then got the official nod, followed by Sean Spicer by default again. Anthony Scaramucci showed up for a hot second and flamed out spectacularly, leaving … Sean Spicer, who had resigned already but hadn’t left yet.
Now that Spicer has truly packed up, Donald Trump has chosen Hope Hicks as Spinal Tap’s new drummer. Er, excuse me, White House director of communications. Six of one….
Hope Hicks will be named the new White House communications director, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
President Trump has offered the job to Hicks and she has accepted the position, according to a White House insider. Hicks has been close by Trump’s side since the early days of the campaign and is one of his most trusted staffers. She has been serving on the press team in more of a behind-the-scenes role as the director of strategic communications.
At 28, Hicks might qualify as the youngest White House communications director ever, but she has the relevant experience in this case. Hicks has worked for Ivanka and Donald Trump either under contract or directly for five years, full-time within the family organization for the last three. However, Hicks handled corporate communications, not politics, until Trump kicked off his presidential campaign in early 2015 and made Hicks his press secretary.
Perhaps her best quality is Hicks’ propensity for staying in the background. She has declined to make herself available for media profiles, preferring to keep the spotlight on her boss. In that sense, Hicks is the anti-Mooch, and much closer to Dubke’s approach. That puts her in better position to keep Trump’s favor, as he clearly dislikes when his subordinates begin to outshine him, and her two-plus years of successfully keeping her job while dealing with Trump’s communications-strategy challenges suggests that Hicks might be the right person for this job, youth or not.
Still, depending on how one counts it, Hicks is either the third, fourth, or by discrete terms possibly the sixth person to hold this job in seven months. It’s been called “one of the worst jobs in Washington,” but … come on, man. The problem in this administration isn’t the job, it’s the boss, who makes hash out of any and all communications strategies. Trump did it again yesterday, turning a repaired response to the Charlottesville riot and domestic terror attack into a raucous reversal and undoing whatever good his Monday statement accomplished.
The only reason Hicks would want to take the job after that debacle has to be sheer loyalty. And that means that Trump had better find a way to keep Hicks in that position for a while. If Hicks spontaneously combusts too soon, they may have to get Spinal Tap to refer a drummer or two for the job.
Update: This might be even more Spinal Tap-py than first thought:
Hope Hicks, President Trump’s trusted confidant and adviser, is taking on expanded communications responsibilities while the White House searches for a new communications director to replace Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired from the job after just 10 days, according to a White House official.
Hicks will work with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in an interim and unofficial capacity to fill the role of the communications director while the White House works to find a permanent replacement — a search with which Hope will assist.
It’s been more than two weeks since The Mooch’s departure, and they’re only now getting around to appointing an acting comms director? Hmmm. I’d bet that this is a tryout for the real job, a way to ease Hicks into it, and to keep the damage to her to a minimum in case it’s too much.
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