Illustration: Elena Scotti (Photos: Getty Images)
Like all of Donald Trump’s arrogant loyalists, Hope Hicks was thrust into titles she was diametrically unqualified for, where she was rewarded with a jobs that hinged on her singular talent: lying to the American public with a straight face. The woman with thick, glorious hair like a horse’s mane and a name like the protagonist in a racist romance novel, Hope Hicks became synonymous with “Trump woman whose purpose is… unclear.” In that respect, Hicks is the epitome of the kind of person the Trump administration valued: inexperienced, inept, from a wealthy background, ceaselessly loyal—especially towards those actions which are detrimental to the country—and silent.
Hicks’s career trajectory confounds, evolving from model to fashion PR person to White House Communications Director in a matter of years—the kind of unimaginable privilege afforded a certain type of white woman. The daughter of Connecticut WASPs, Hicks began her stint in the public eye as a teenage model, becoming the face for the Gossip Girl spinoff series It Girl and the Young Adult book series The Hourglass, according to Refinery 29. After school, she began working in public relations, eventually landing the lucrative gig of schilling Ivanka Trump’s fashion line at Trump Tower. Dad Donald poached her in 2014—despite the fact that she had no political experience whatsoever—where she ostensibly became Trump’s press secretary, largely due to her apparent distaste for the civic duties of a free press.
Quickly and quietly, she made a name for herself as a yes (wo)man to Trump, one who rarely spoke in public or to the media. Naturally, such an apparent distaste for PR led to a promotion to White House communications director, following the ousting of the extremely vocal Anthony Scaramucci in 2017. In her time as a celebrated member of the Trump administration, Hicks helped draft the White House statement defending the resigned Staff Secretary Rob Porter, coincidentally her current boyfriend, against multiple domestic abuse allegations. In 2018, testified for eight hours to the House Intelligence Committee about many things, including how she occasionally lies for the President but has never lied about Russia. The next day, she announced she was resigning from the position she held for less than a year. Nothing suspicious there!
Immediately following her resignation. Hicks took the only kind of gig available to former Trumpies: she became Fox’s chief communications officer. It must’ve been so sweet to finally get to influence the President’s thoughts, as he gets all his opinions from the television “news” channel—instead of blinding validating the motherfucker. At any rate, in 2019, she told the House Judiciary Committee that she routinely told “white lies” on President Trump’s behalf, once again confirming her dishonesty.
Apparently her relentless betrayal to the American public and loyalty to Trump paid off, and she rejoined the administration in 2020 as a senior counselor to the president to continue her incompetency. There Hicks instructed Trump to give an Oval Office address about the severity of the covid-19 pandemic and the failing stock market. He did… something like that, but, of course, it was “a raft of inaccuracies that aides later had to clarify,” according to Politico. In all of Hicks’s endeavors to ensure “the White House is ‘operating with one voice,’” she created total internal confusion, further terrifying American public at a time where clear and succinct information about the coronavirus was crucial.
It was Hicks who advised Trump to march across Lafayette Square for a photo op at St. John’s Church in D.C. during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, following the murder of George Floyd, a decision which resulted in peaceful protesters getting “flushed from the square with flash grenades and chemical spray,” as The New York Times reported. Oh, also, she also got coronavirus.
Though she held many titles, it was never quite clear what Hicks’s role was. What was evident, however, is why Trump valued her: she is the ideal of the white, affluent Trump woman who will follow him to the ends of the earth and stay quiet while doing so. Hicks is the face of complicity and cowardice, of ineptitude and entitlement. She directly contributed to this country’s dismissal of a free press, devalued the media’s responsibility to speak truth to power, and hid her face to avoid any consequence. In an equitable reality, there would be repercussions, but punishment rarely comes for the powerful—and if these last four years have shown the American people anything, it is that the world is far from just.