Witness for the Prostitution: HOPE HICKS
Nick at Nelson: Cable unit is filming kids show
There's an element of child's play at this year's Byron Nelson Classic.
Nickelodeon Games and Sports, a unit of the children's cable network, has assigned camera crews to film a half-hour show about two youngsters who will follow two professional golfers during Sunday's final round.
The show will air in the fall.
"We're following what's happening in the tournament through the eyes of two regular kids," said Jay Schmalholz, executive producer and creative director.
Hope Hicks, a 13-year-old from Greenwich, Conn., and Ben Andrews, a 12-year-old from Southport, Conn., arrived at the Four Seasons Resort on Tuesday.
Each of them will pick a partner by Saturday, then hang with him through 18 holes on Sunday.
Ben, an avid golfer, knows just what he's looking for: "a sense of humor, a sense of pride, someone who's into the game, someone who can teach me different things about golf."
After working on the practice green with Chris DiMarco and Scott McCarron, Hope said the golfers were open to the idea.
"They've been great," she said.
Hope Hicks has made a career out of being the only subtle person in the Trump administration.
Hope Hicks Breaks Down On The Witness Stand As She Buries Trump During Her Testimony
A stunning moment during today's trial
Hope Hicks, a former top aide to former U.S. President Donald Trump, testifies during Trump's criminal trial before Justice Juan Merchan on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. May 3, 2024 in this courtroom sketch.
REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
Hope Hicks broke down on the witness stand today after testifying about a conversation she had with Donald Trump, in which Trump told her that Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels to keep the bad story out of the press and that Cohen paid with his own money out of the goodness of his heart.
When asked if she believed that, Hicks said that she didn't because she felt there was no chance Cohen would spend that much of his own money just to help out Trump.
Hicks then began to cry on the stand and the judge took a break.
Hope Hicks Testifies In Trump Trial
Ron Filipkowski
Hicks broke down likely knowing that her testimony is a significant blow to Donald Trump's defense during this trial, in which his team has argued that Trump was not aware of the payments made by Cohen.
According to a MeidasTouch source in the courtroom during this stunning exchange, this was "the closest thing to a Perry Mason moment there is in a white collar case!"
Our source added, "She just sunk him and realizes it."
The prosecution next called Trump's former close aide and former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks to the stand.
She said that she has not spoken to Trump since September 2022.
Unlike other Trump-adjacent people, Hicks says she hired her own attorney.
She said that she has no current connection or association with Trump.
Hicks testified that she met Trump because of her association with Ivanka to help her market her various businesses.
She then ended up working for Trump Org starting in 2014 working in PR for the company.
She says that despite the fact that it is a big company with a lot of executives, everyone reports directly to Trump and he is involved in every aspect of the business.
Hicks said that when Trump ran for president she became the Press Secretary for the campaign.
She said she spoke to Trump every day in that role and he was involved in every decision.
Hicks testified that she knew Enquirer publisher David Pecker from her previous employment before she went to work for Trump Org, and that she knew him to be a friend of Trump.
Hicks said she recalled one phone call between Trump and Pecker where Trump congratulated him on the Ben Carson smear story on medical malpractice, and told him it was "Pulitzer worthy."
Hicks said she first learned of the Access Hollywood tape when she received an email on October 2, 2016, from the Washington Post seeking comment.
Hicks said she immediately forwarded the email to senior people in the campaign.
Hicks was asked her reaction to the tape and she said she was "very concerned."
Hicks says she went to tell Trump about it because he doesn’t use email.
She said his first reaction to it was, “that doesn’t sound like something I would say.”
She said that she was with Trump when he first watched the video of it.
She said he knew it was bad for him politically but said it was “locker room talk.”
The prosecutor then established with Hicks that the campaign went into crisis mode as Republican leaders in the House and Senate began to condemn and distance themselves from Trump.
Hicks said when they first got the press inquiry from the WSJ about Karen McDougal, she forwarded it to Jared Kushner because he was tight with Rupert Murdoch and they were hoping he could stall the story.
She then drafted a statement denying everything.
Hicks also testified that the only person with access to post from Trump’s social media accounts was Dan Scavino, and he was only allowed to do that with Trump’s prior approval.
Cohen then sent Hicks several text messages after the WSJ story broke.
She responded that she thought it was a poorly written article and wouldn't get much traction.
Cohen said he agreed and didn't think anyone would believe the story, but if it did get traction he had the signed statement from Stormy denying an affair ready to go.
Hicks responded, "Keep praying!!!" that it would get no traction.
Hicks said that Trump then wanted her to get David Pecker's number because he wanted to call him, so she asked Cohen for it.
Hicks said that Trump was worried about how Melania would react to the story, so he asked Hicks to make sure no newspapers were delivered to their residence the next morning.
She was then asked if Trump was concerned how it would hurt his campaign.
Hicks said he was constantly asking her, "How's it playing?" with the public.
Hicks testified that Trump told her that Michael Cohen paid Stormy to keep it out of the press and that Cohen paid with his own money.
When asked if she believed that she said that she didn't because there is no way Cohen would spend that much of his own money just to help out Trump.
Trump told her that it was better that they were having to deal with the story in 2018 then right before the election, which was the critical piece of testimony the state was looking for.
Hicks then began to cry and the judge took a break.
She never once looked in Trump's direction during her testimony.
On cross-examination from Trump's lawyer Bove, Hicks testified that Cohen was not a part of the Trump campaign but tried to "insert himself" into it on a regular basis.
She said he was just supposed to handle Trump's personal affairs, but he considered himself "a fixer" so he would get involved in areas where he wasn't needed.
She joked that he was only a fixer because most of the time he was fixing something that he broke.
Throughout her testimony on direct examinations with the prosecutor, Hicks referred to Trump as "Mister Trump."
That eventually changed on cross when Bove continued to refer to him as "President Trump."
Hicks then testified about how much Trump respects Melania and values her opinion and that is why he was so afraid of her finding out about McDougal and Stormy.
This duality of Hicks' testimony highlighted the main points of both sides.
The prosecution focusing with Hicks on Trump's constant worry about how it would affect the campaign before the election, and the defense trying to deflect that away to suggest his main focus was on Melania.
Hope Against Hope
Hope Hicks is kidding herself if she thinks that her tenure in the Trump White House will be judged only for harmless, situational untruths.
February 28, 2018
Presidents are in the habit of lying—often with bloody consequences.
The Bay of Pigs, the Gulf of Tonkin, Watergate, Iran-Contra, “mushroom clouds,” and “weapons of mass destruction”—these are just a few of the postwar greatest hits.
But, in terms of frequency and of the almost joyful abandonment of integrity as a demand of the office, Donald Trump is singular.
He starts lying in the morning, tweeting while watching Fox News, and he keeps at it until his head hits the pillow at night.
He lies to slander and seduce, he lies to profit, and he sometimes lies, it seems, just because.
His capacity for falsehood is so heroic that we struggle to keep count of the daily instances.
(After one year of the Trump Presidency, the Washington Post put the average at 5.9 falsehoods per day, a total of 2,140.)
One consequence of this aspect of Trump’s character—oftentimes, it seems to be the very core of his character—is that lying defines the culture of his Administration just as it did his family business.
Hope Hicks has now announced that she is resigning as Trump’s communications director.
This comes just one day after she told the House Intelligence Committee, in a nine-hour closed-door session, that she was occasionally given to telling “white lies.”
In the moral universe of the Trump White House, her sin could not have been the lying; it could only be the admission.
Michael Flynn. Paul Manafort. Sean Spicer. Anthony Scaramucci. Steve Bannon. Sebastian Gorka. Omarosa Manigault-Newman.
Next to these now-departed characters, Hope Hicks was a decidedly recessive cast member, almost a cipher by her own design.
She was known among White House reporters to answer calls, texts, and e-mails––a courtesy that is hardly a universal in politics––though she almost never allowed herself to be quoted.
When she appeared on television, it was inadvertent, as if she had mistakenly stepped into the frame.
When she was written about, reporters invariably leaned on stock phrases about her appearance, her outfits, her loyalty and access to Trump, her ability to read his moods, her stint as a model, and her upbringing in Greenwich, Connecticut.
As a communications director, she was, when it came to the subject of Hope Hicks, uncommunicative.
The words she used to describe her feelings upon resigning were that she had “no words.”
Hicks, however, is kidding herself if she thinks that her tenure will be judged only for harmless, situational untruths.
The white lie is a phrase that goes back to the sixteenth century, at least. “Shakespeare’s World,” a collaboration between the Oxford English Dictionary and the Folger Shakespeare Library, reports that, in 1567, one Ralph Adderly wrote of his brother-in-law, “I do assure you he is unsuspected of any untruth or other notable crime (except a white lie) which is taken for a Small fault in these parts.”
The President’s daily communications are a tangle of falsehoods, defamations, and tall tales, and Hicks was his facilitator, his defender, his explainer.
That line of work goes far beyond the scope of “white lies.”
Sissela Bok, in “Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life,” writes that white lies are “the most common and the most trivial forms that duplicity can take.”
They are lies “not meant to injure anyone.”
The Administration’s penchant for deception is injurious in many ways, not least because it devalues truth as a value in public discourse.
Like Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Hicks, even in her camera- and microphone-shy way, spent years being loyal to Trump and his mendacities.
She was always prepared to do his bidding, including when there was an ugliness to the bidding:
She pushed back hard against the Pope when he dared to criticize the President’s hopes to wall off Mexico.
She cast her lot with him and stayed with him as the injuries he inflicted multiplied. A
well-reported Politico profile of Hicks portrayed her loyalty as eerily absolute:
“Colleagues described Hicks as someone who communicates with Trump in a similar way to his daughter Ivanka––she can express her disagreements to the president privately, but ultimately supports his decisions unquestioningly.”
It is not entirely clear why Hicks is resigning.
Maggie Haberman, of the Times, tweeted that the “white lies” moment was not the reason.
It could be that Hicks is just worn out from being by Trump’s side for nearly three years.
She hardly distinguished herself while trying to cover for Rob Porter, a former White House aide whose two ex-wives accused him of assault.
She is said to have been involved romantically with Porter.
Perhaps we will hear from Hope Hicks in a more unguarded way in the future.
The pattern has been that, once these aides lose their White House passes and get some distance from the tumult of Pennsylvania Avenue, they begin to reveal their sense of despair about the place, if not their shame.
Everyone hates everyone; everyone has it out for the rest.
Just today the President tweeted that his Attorney General was “disgraceful.”
“Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by fifty,” Reince Priebus is quoted as saying in a new chapter of “The Gatekeepers,” a book on White House chiefs of staff, by Chris Whipple.
Trump has created a poisonous culture in his Administration that is not only doing great damage to the country but is also destroying itself.
Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, is known by foreign leaders to be so hungry for business and open to influence that he’s been denied the security clearances that a President’s emissary would need.
Now the Times has revealed that he has taken tens of millions of dollars in loans from financial interests that only recently came to do White House business with him.
The Oval Office used to be described as a chaotic “Grand Central Station,” mobbed with warring satraps hustling for the President’s fleeting attentions.
One after another, they have headed for, or they have been shown, the door.
Perhaps Hope Hicks will retain her sense of discretion long after she leaves the White House.
In any case, it is hard to agree that her deceptions were merely occasional or, as she put it to the House members, “white lies”; the self-deception required to serve Donald Trump with such unquestioning devotion, to be his voice, knowing what she must know, has proved anything but harmless.
Hope Hicks’s White Lies and Smizing Eyes
If you are going to tell Congress that working as the communications director for the Trump White House involved telling only “white lies,” you’d better come with your game face on.
It is often mentioned that Hope Hicks, the departing White House communications director, used to model, a fact that seems of little relevance to her political life.
But it does perhaps help to explain the photo of Hicks, taken by Chip Somodevilla, of Getty, that has been circulating since Tuesday.
Arriving at the Capitol to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, Hicks, dressed in a wide-lapel navy-blue coat, turned her contoured face toward the camera and gave a perfect, ten-out-of-ten smize.
“Smizing”—smiling with your eyes—is a neologism that Tyra Banks, the host of “America’s Next Top Model,” coined to teach the show’s contestants how to hold a viewer’s attention.
To smile without smizing is merely to gesture emptily toward an expression, like a school kid holding a grin for a class picture, or a politician who has already shaken fifty hands and must now shake a fifty-first.
But to smize without smiling is to create a frisson of mystery, a hint of some secret mental calculus at work behind the mask of the face.
Hope Hicks Resigns from the Trump White House
What did the public know about Hope Hicks, the young White House aide who within five years went from helping Ivanka Trump’s fashion line with P.R. to working as Donald Trump’s campaign press secretary to serving as the White House communications director?
She didn’t give interviews, and was a quiet presence in a loud White House.
The fifth person to serve as communications director under Trump, she held the job for a hundred and ninety-six days—longer than any of her predecessors—before her decision to resign became public, on Wednesday.
Sean Spicer
Michael Dubke
Sean Spicer
Anthony Scaramucci
Hope Hicks
Bill Shine
Stephanie Grisham
Hicks was a trusted member of Trump’s team.
Trump’s political circle is divided between people who are family and people who are not, and Hicks was one of the longtime Trump loyalists who appeared to be almost family.
Writing for GQ in 2016 about Hicks’s role on the Trump campaign, Olivia Nuzzi described how the young aide was “summoned in critical moments of confusion to play instigator and score-settler.”
Nuzzi gave an example: “It was her job to facilitate Trump’s rebuke of the Pope after His Holiness questioned the Christianity of anybody who would build a border wall.”
After Trump took office, Hicks’s name rarely appeared in the frequent reports of internal backbiting and power struggles in the White House.
She developed a reputation as a true Trump insider, someone the President not only relied on but trusted.
GQ named her the most powerful person in Washington.
“Hope is feared and revered in the West Wing,” the White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway told the magazine.
And yet, while she projected an above-the-fray aura, Hicks was herself at the center of several major scandals.
That her exit isn’t being received as the departure of a scandal-tainted aide but as the surprise exit of a trusted and competent Presidential adviser has more to do with the context of this White House than it does the objective facts of her record.
She was reportedly involved in the drafting of a misleading statement that Donald Trump, Jr., initially gave to the press, last July, in response to questions about his election-season meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer.
That statement is now reportedly of interest to the special counsel, Robert Mueller.
(Hicks’s lawyer has denied that she was involved in creating the statement.)
More recently, Hicks apparently was also behind a statement that the White House put out, in the name of John Kelly, the chief of staff, defending the staff secretary, Robert Porter, after Porter’s ex-wives came forward with accusations of domestic violence.
Hicks was reportedly in a relationship with Porter, who resigned soon after the allegations emerged.
Maggie Haberman, the Times reporter who broke the news of Hicks’s resignation, tweeted that Hicks’s decision was not related to her private testimony on Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee.
According to the Times, Hicks told the committee that her job sometimes required her to tell white lies but that she had never lied about matters related to the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
What else did she tell the committee?
Of what interest might she be to the special counsel’s investigation?
And how might she navigate these issues now that she is no longer in the White House?
That, the public still doesn’t know.
Trump's Hope
During the 11th day of the criminal trial in the case N.Y. v. Trump, former Trump campaign and White House communications director testified that Michael Cohen, Trump's ex-lawyer, would often frustrate campaign staff and do things that were not helpful.
On the witness stand, Hicks testified that Cohen "used to like to call himself Mr. Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it."
Hicks testified under subpoena for the prosecution.
She praised the former president at times, and got choked up when Trump's attorney asked her about her time working for the Trump Organization.
Cohen is a central player and could be the star witness for Manhattan District Attorney Bragg's case against the former president that he falsified business records connected to a payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to quiet her claims alleging an illicit affair with Trump in the early 2000s.
Trump paid a $9,000 fine for violating the judge's gag order ruling Friday, but there are still four more alleged violations that Judge Juan Merchan has yet to rule on.
Hope Hicks and Corey Lewandowski had an on-and-off affair
Wolff adds on top of this revelation that after Lewandowski was fired as campaign manager in the summer of 2016, Hicks was upset by its coverage — and Trump wasn't having it:
"Trump, who otherwise seemed to treat Hicks in a protective and even paternal way, looked up and said, 'Why? You've already done enough for him. You're the best piece of tail he'll ever have,' sending Hicks running from the room."
What we know about Hope Hicks, SMU grad and Donald Trump’s secretive press secretary
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's press secretary, 27-year-old Hope Hicks, was on the campaign trail in Iowa in January.(File Photo / The Associated Press)
Jun 20, 2016
Donald Trump's press secretary hasn't shared much information about herself, and she's rarely, if ever, available for comment.
But this week, the public learned more about Hope Hicks when GQ and Marie Claire magazines published pieces about the Southern Methodist University alum.
Since her graduation from SMU's Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences in 2010, Hicks, 27, has skyrocketed to the top of the Trump universe.
The Connecticut native comes from a family of well-connected public relations experts.
Hicks routinely declines interview requests, unlike Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, whose social media presence rivals that of Trump himself.
However, Hicks sat down for an on-the-record Q&A with Rebecca Nelson of Marie Claire, mostly about life on the campaign trail and how other women can get involved in politics.
Olivia Nuzzi, of GQ, was able to secure time to talk with Donald Trump about Hicks, in front of her, but Hicks declined to speak for herself.
Here's what we learned:
A model beginning
Hicks got her start in public relations working not for Trump, but for his daughter Ivanka.
Ivanka was expanding her clothing line in 2012 and Hicks was plucked from a New York PR firm to help.
She did some modeling as well, GQ reports, appearing in an Ivanka Trump collection mint-colored dress with a black clutch and heels.
The gig at Ivanka's is how Hicks entered The Donald's orbit.
"I thought Hope was outstanding," Trump told GQ. In October 2014 she officially joined his team.
Hicks also was a cover girl for a Gossip Girl spin off series titled The It Girl.
Part gatekeeper, part instigator
Trump campaign communications manager Hope Hicks steps off a plane in January in Muscatine, Iowa.(File Photo / The Associated Press)
Hicks, who has been in the job for a year and a half, was not expected to be Trump's press secretary for long.
She's now outlasted some of the Trump campaign's most public figures, including campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, whom Trump fired Monday.
Hicks' primary job is keeping the media under control.
But at moments during the campaign she has been called upon to clarify Trump's stance on issues.
The GQ piece touches on Hicks' role in settling Trump's stance on abortion, which he'd changed four times in three days.
Hicks laid it out plainly: "He will change the law through his judicial appointments and allow the states to protect the unborn."
Most of the time though, Hicks does not respond to requests for comment.
It is a level of inaction that has been memorialized in the most 2016 way possible, a Twitter bot that tweets only one thing:
Keeping up with the news
Hicks receives about 250 media requests per day in her inbox.
She and other staff members make sure that Trump is kept in the loop on what is being reported by printing out Google News results for "Donald J. Trump," GQ reports.
Trump marks up the articles with circles, arrows and annotations, and then they are "scanned and emailed to the journalist or person quoted who has drawn Trump's attention, under the subject line 'From the office of Donald J. Trump.'"
The GQ article describes Hicks as being irked by reporters' questions and not responding.
"She's seemingly unaware that they might just be vetting a potential United States president," Nuzzi writes.
Hicks also handles the growing list of media outlets that that campaign has banned from covering its events.
A source who has been with Trump and Hicks told GQ that the banning system is simple.
He reads something that he doesn't like and yells to her, "This guy's banned! He's banned for a while."
A misquote
Hicks was not always as precise with her words.
GQ reports her high school yearbook quote, "The future belongs to those who believe in the power of their dreams," was attributed to Jimmy Buffett.
In actuality, it is a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt.
Does Trump want her in the White House?
"Oh, yeah, sure," Trump told GQ. "In either capacity, either there, or she'll stay here, but uh, I think she wants to go there."
SMU Wunderkind Tapped as White House Communications Director: Everything You Need to Know About Hope Hicks
Hope Hicks, President Donald Trump’s longtime aide and a graduate of Southern Methodist University, was named interim White House director of communications on Wednesday.
The 28-year-old is expected to temporarily fill the role which was left vacant after Anthony Scaramucci was fired at the end of July.
Hicks joined the Trump administration as White House director of strategic communications.
Now, she holds the administration’s highest communications office.
She holds power over what members of the press get interviews with the president and helps shape his messaging.
Her new responsibilities as interim director of communications will be in addition to those as director of strategic communications.
According to the New York Times via a senior administration official, Hicks will help Trump find a more permanent person for the job.
As director of strategic communications, a newly created role, Hicks boasts the top White House salary of $179,700.
She had already made Forbes 30 Under 30 list — and her influence is growing.
Hicks served as press secretary during Trump’s campaign, and has long been a crucial part of his communications team.
The Hicks File
The 2016 presidential campaign was Hicks’ first endeavor in politics.
She became an important advisor to the Trump family during her time working at public relations firm Hiltzik Strategies, first working for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, and later moving into other Trump ventures.
Hicks has remained close to the family including President Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner.
A native of Greenwich, Connecticut, Hicks graduated from SMU in 2010.
She played lacrosse throughout all four years of college, in the club lacrosse program which she helped start.
Other interesting facts about the young White House official?
She took dictation for Trump’s tweets during his campaign.
However, Hope Hicks herself has maintained an incredibly low-profile, spurring the creation of a parody account (which has now been suspended)
@HicksNoComment.
She signed a contract with Ford Models at a young age, starring in a Ralph Lauren campaign with her sister at age 11, gracing the cover of a Gossip Girl novel as a teenager, and appearing on the cover of Greenwich Magazine.
Hicks apparently foreshadowed her future in an interview with the publication, saying, “If the acting thing doesn’t work out, I could really see myself in politics. Who knows?”
Meet Donald Trump's 27-Year-Old Communications Director, Hope Hicks
There are few women in Donald Trump's inner circle.
You're probably already familiar with his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, but what do you know about Hope Hicks?
The 27-year-old communications director may have kept a low-profile throughout Trump's campaign, but she played an integral role in his unprecedented rise.
As Trump tweets about the controversies du jour with abandon, delivers unscripted soliloquies at campaign stops, and is a near-constant presence on cable news, Hicks was behind the scenes, juggling the moving parts of the rapid news cycle.
In 2012, after a successful teen modeling career and graduating from Southern Methodist University, the Connecticut native got her first taste of the Trump life working on the hotel and golf divisions of his company for New York public relations firm Hiltzik Strategies.
The Trump Organization brought her in-house as the director of communications in 2014, and the following year, she got the surprise of a lifetime when The Donald asked her to join his budding campaign.
Here, in her first-ever interview in her current role, she shares what it's like to work for the unconventional candidate.
Marie Claire: Did you ever think you'd be this integral to a presidential campaign?
Hope Hicks: No, but it's funny—I was home for Easter, reading an article from when I was 11 or 12, talking about how my career as a model had taken off. It said, "If modeling doesn't work out for you, what would you do?" And I said, "Well, I'm not really sure, but I'm interested in politics."
We drove to the event with a police escort, and there were thousands of people in the parking lot. He was like a rock star.
MC: Tell us about a typical day on the campaign trail.
HH: In 2015, we were headquartered in New York City in Trump Tower. While we were there, we'd facilitate dozens of interview requests on a given day. He'll talk to anybody; he'll answer anything. Then at about 3 p.m., we'd leave and go somewhere to do a rally at night—typically one of the first three [primary] states: Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina. I try to be in the office as much as possible to get the full experience working with volunteers, making phone calls, putting out signs—things that the communications director probably normally wouldn't do.
MC: Can you describe an especially crazy day?
HH: Last July, in Laconia, New Hampshire, when we got off the plane, there were hundreds of people pressed up against the fence with signs, waiting to see Mr. Trump. We had been campaigning for a couple of weeks at that point, but this was really the first stop where we all looked at each other and said, "There's something going on here." We drove to the event with a police escort, and there were thousands of people in the parking lot. He was like a rock star.
The pressure and the long hours—it's all relative to what Trump's putting in, which is everything.
MC: Do the long hours and constant travel take a toll?
HH: There was a moment [the week before] the New Hampshire primary when we were in the office and somebody wanted to go home at like 11:30 p.m. And the campaign manager said, "My boss [Trump] is working harder than you. That's not right. You need to stay and do what you're supposed to do." This is Mr. Trump's time away from his family, and frankly, it's his money. He's spent millions, and the thing we can do is work to the best of our ability as hard as possible. The pressure and the long hours—it's all relative to what he's putting in, which is everything.
MC: What advice would you give other women looking to get into politics?
HH: My dad always says that there's no substitute for hard work. If you work hard and you work for somebody who empowers you and challenges you, you'll be successful. Mr. Trump and Ivanka [Trump, his daughter] say that if you're passionate about what you do, you'll ultimately be successful, because you'll work so hard because you love it so much, and results will happen. And even if you're not successful, meaning you [don't] reach great levels of fame and fortune, but you're happy doing what you're doing, you'll be successful in that right. And I think that's very true.
There is just no way that a camera or an episode or a documentary could capture what has gone on. There is nothing like it.
MC: How well does TV mirror what goes on in a campaign?
HH: We get so many requests like, "We want behind-the-scenes access" or "We're going to show people what it's really like to be on the campaign with Donald Trump." But there is just no way that a camera or an episode or a documentary could capture what has gone on. There is nothing like it. And I would say 90 percent of that is the people you see and the things they say, and the way they react to Mr. Trump. It is the most unbelievable, awe-inspiring thing.
Trump campaign staffers get into public screaming match
There’s big drama between the top advisers at the Trump campaign.
Donald Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks and campaign manager Corey Lewandowski were seen having a public screaming match on the street in Manhattan on Wednesday night.
Onlookers were stunned to see Hicks, 27, hollering at Lewandowski, 42, in plain view of passersby on 61st Street near Park Avenue.
One witness told us, “Hope was screaming at Corey, ‘I am done with you!’ It was ugly, she was doubled over with her fists clenched. He stood there looking shocked with his hands on his head.”
Other sources insist the street showdown was about how to handle the announcement that seasoned political operative Paul Manafort would be taking an even larger role in Trump’s campaign, and how Lewandowski’s role would be defined going forward.
Another source told us, “It was a campaign-related disagreement. They were arguing how the announcement about Manafort taking more responsibility would be handled. There is an internal struggle to define what Corey’s role would be.”
A third source added, “It was a continuation of a discussion about when the announcement would go out. Corey wanted to wait until Thursday to give him a chance to talk to certain people first. Hicks was under pressure by others to make the announcement sooner.”
Either way, it is a sign of internal discord in the Trump campaign between the Lewandowski and the Manafort camps.
Hicks — who had previously defended Lewandowski over claims that he was involved in a physical altercation with a female reporter — declined to comment Thursday night. Lewandowski also didn’t comment.
Fire and Fury:
Trump Called SMU Grad Hope Hicks a "Piece of Tail"
Hope Hicks can now add "being objectified by the president of the United States" to the narrow list of accomplishments she's racked up as she's gone from SMU English major to White House communications director.
According to Michael Wolff's new presidential tell-all Fire and Fury, Hicks, a former model and Gossip Girl novelization cover star who caught Trump's eye while modeling for Ivanka Trump's clothing line, had on an on-again, off-again relationship with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Hicks and Lewandowski's liaison culminated in a Page Six-covered screaming match on 61st Street near Park Avenue and Manhattan in May 2016.
The next month, Trump fired Lewandowski.
In a moment of compassion, Hicks, who'd by then become one of Trump's closest, and tight-lipped, confidants, asked Trump how she could help Lewandowski.
"Why?" Trump replied, Wolff writes. "You've already done enough for him. You're the best piece of tail he'll ever have."
Hicks immediately fled the room after Trump's comments, according to Wolff, but it wasn't enough to stop her rise through the campaign's ranks.
When Trump dumped former communications director Anthony Scaramucci last summer, Hicks, who did not return a request to comment on the contents of the book, took over as his interim replacement.
In November, she took over the job full time.
Trump has disputed both the content of the book and Wolff's claim that he was granted extensive access to the White House in 2017.
"I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist," the president tweeted last week.
Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, called the book a "complete fantasy," during a press conference Thursday, the day before Fire and Fury's release.
What Is Hope Hicks Crying About?
Imagine a trial scene at the end of a Mob movie, with a wood-panelled courtroom and a white-haired judge.
The old don at the defense table, surrounded by slick lawyers.
The striving prosecutors.
The armed security.
The sworn witnesses, one by one, pressed to stay loyal or turn rat.
That has pretty much been the scene on the fifteenth floor of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse these past few weeks, during former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial.
On Friday, the former White House counsellor Hope Hicks took the stand.
Hicks got involved with the Trump campaign in its early days; she was already on the team in 2015, when Trump came down the Trump Tower escalator to announce that he was running for President, and she was still with him in 2021, when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to keep him in office.
But Hicks has since kept her distance.
After his insurrection failed, Trump decamped for Florida.
Hicks stayed in Washington, where she runs her own communications consultancy.
Now she was testifying against Trump after being subpoenaed by the government.
In press reports about the Trump Administration, she’d often been written about as a kind of surrogate daughter to the President—according to other 2016 campaign aides, Hicks used to press Trump’s jackets and pants as he wore them.
When she walked into Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom, she could have passed for Ivanka Trump’s sister: hair extravagantly done, back straight, arms down by her sides, handbag held loosely with just the ends of her fingers.
But, when she sat down in the witness stand, she didn’t look in her old boss’s direction.
“I’m really nervous,” she said, immediately reaching for a glass of water placed in front of her by a court officer.
The government wanted Hicks to testify because she’d had conversations with both Trump and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, about Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, women who say they had sex with Trump in the early years of his marriage to former First Lady Melania Trump.
As a top communications aide, Hicks helped shape the official campaign and White House response to articles about McDougal and Daniels that ran in the Wall Street Journal both before and after Trump was elected.
The Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, believes that Trump and his allies paid off McDougal and Daniels in 2016 as part of an illegal conspiracy to influence the Presidential election.
Bragg’s office has charged Trump with falsifying business records when he allegedly paid Cohen back for paying off Daniels.
Trump maintains his innocence, and, in fact, has portrayed himself in many ways as the victim in this trial.
Several of the witnesses who may take the stand have themselves been investigated for—or convicted of—crimes.
But, in Hicks’s case, neither side suggested that she has done anything improper.
She gave the prosecutors exactly what they wanted when she was asked about Trump’s reaction to a 2018 Wall Street Journal article about his relationship with Daniels, an adult-film actress who says that she and Trump had sex, in 2006, in a suite on the top floor of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe.
“Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election,” Hicks said.
(Trump’s lawyers have suggested to the jury that the former President was primarily concerned about how news articles about alleged affairs would affect his wife; prosecutors have argued that what he was really worried about was the election.)
Hicks also acknowledged that she had texted with Cohen about Daniels just a few days before Election Day in 2016.
Cohen told her that “if necessary,” he had a statement from Daniels “denying everything.”
“I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I didn’t want to know,” Hicks said.
But she didn’t give the prosecutors everything they were looking for.
A few days ago, David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer—who purchased the rights to McDougal’s story about Trump in 2016 for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and who later entered into a coöperation agreement with the government—testified that, in March of 2018, after McDougal gave an interview to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he’d spoken to both Hicks and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about McDougal’s hush-money contract.
“I explained to them, to the two of them, that—why I was going to extend her agreement,” Pecker said. “And both of them said that they thought that it was a good idea.”
When the senior counsel to the District Attorney Matthew Colangelo asked Hicks whether she had spoken to Pecker after McDougal spoke to CNN, her nervousness evaporated, revealing the seasoned communications aide beneath.
“I have no recollection of speaking to Mr. Pecker after that interview,” she said.
When asked about Cohen, who has also coöperated with the government and is expected to be the prosecution’s star witness, Hicks took a potshot.
“I used to say that he liked to call himself a ‘fixer’ or ‘Mr. Fix-It,’ and it was only because he first broke it,” she said.
For most of the time that Hicks was testifying, Trump was sitting in his now customary position at the defense table, slumped in his chair, eyes closed, seemingly semiconscious.
But, when Hicks made that crack about Cohen, his mouth broke out into a crooked little paternal smile.
It was left to Emil Bove, one of Trump’s attorneys, to cross-examine Hicks.
Bove, a former federal terrorism prosecutor, had displayed nothing but contempt for the previous witnesses.
“The things that I’ve shown you this morning raise some questions about how this phone was handled, right?” he asked Douglas Daus, a forensic computer analyst in the District Attorney’s office who handled cell phones that Cohen turned over, after grilling him on Friday morning.
“In many ways, we are just going to have to take Michael Cohen’s word for it, aren’t we?”
But, with Hicks, Bove was gentler.
“I think you said this morning that it ran a little bit like a family business while you were there?” he asked, at one point, referring to the Trump Organization.
Hicks said yes.
Bove also asked her about her early days there.
“Your initial title was the director of communications?” he asked.
She said yes.
“And that was a position that the Trump Organization created to bring you in, right?” he asked.
She said yes.
“And I think you said this morning that you focussed on real estate, hospitality, and entertainment—that was your portfolio there?” he said.
She turned her head to the side, and cast her eyes down.
“Sorry,” she said, her voice breaking.
A tissue appeared in her hand, and she dabbed her eyes.
“Could I just have a minute?” she asked.
The stenographer sitting a few feet from Hicks wrote “(Crying)” into the official record.
“Ms. Hicks, do you need a break?” Merchan asked.
“Yes, please,” she said. Merchan excused the jury, and then Hicks, her eyes red and puffy, came down from the stand and walked out of the courtroom, still avoiding Trump.
Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment for Adult-Film Star’s Silence
Agreement just before election required woman to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, people familiar with the matter say
Donald Trump with Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, in a 2006 photo uploaded to her Myspace.com account.
A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said.
‘Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment for Adult-Film Star’s Silence Agreement just before election required woman to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, people familiar with the matter say
By Michael Rothfeld Updated Jan. 12, 2018 3:13 pm ET ind Joe Palazzolo
Donald Trump with Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, in a 2006 photo uploaded to her Myspace.com account.
A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said.
Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, has privately alleged the encounter with Mr. Trump took place after they met at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament on the shore of Lake Tahoe, these people said.
Mr. Trump married Melania Trump in 2005.
Mr. Trump faced other allegations during his campaign of inappropriate behavior with women, and vehemently denied them.
In this matter, there is no allegation of a nonconsensual interaction.
“These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election,” a White House official said, responding to the allegation of a sexual encounter involving Mr. Trump and Ms. Clifford.
The official declined to respond to questions about an agreement with Ms. Clifford.
It isn’t known whether Mr. Trump was aware of any agreement or payment involving her.
In a statement, Mr. Cohen didn’t address the $130,000 payment but said of the alleged sexual encounter that “President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.”
Mr. Cohen added in the statement, addressed to The Wall Street Journal:
“This is now the second time that you are raising outlandish allegations against my client. You have attempted to perpetuate this false narrative for over a year; a narrative that has been consistently Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump's personal attorney denied by all parties since at least
PHOTO: JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS, 2011.”
The Journal previously reported that Ms. Clifford, 38 years old, had been in talks with ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the fall of 2016 about an appearance to discuss Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
In that article, the Journal reported the company that owns the National Enquirer agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model three months before the election for her story of an affair a decade earlier with the Republican presidential nominee, which the tabloid newspaper didn't publish.
The company said she was paid to write fitness columns and appear on magazine covers.
Mr. Cohen also sent a two-paragraph statement by email addressed
“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN” and signed by “Stormy Daniels” denying that she had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Mr. Trump.
“Rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false,” the statement said.
Ms. Clifford didn’t respond to multiple emails seeking comment.
After the agreement, Ms. Clifford’s camp complained the payment wasn’t being made quickly enough and threatened to cancel the deal, some of the people familiar with the matter said.
The payment was made to Ms. Clifford through her lawyer in the matter, Keith Davidson, with funds sent to Mr. Davidson’s client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles, according to the people.
“I previously represented Ms. Daniels,” Mr. Davidson said, referring to Ms. Clifford’s stage name. “Attorney-client privilege prohibits me from commenting on my clients’ legal matters.”
A spokeswoman for City National Bank declined to comment.
The agreement with Ms. Clifford came as the Trump campaign confronted allegations from numerous women who described unwanted sexual advances and alleged assaults by Mr. Trump.
In October 2016, the Washington Post published a videotape made, but never aired, by NBC’s “Access Hollywood” in which Mr. Trump spoke of groping women.
Mr. Trump denied all allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct and apologized at the time for his remarks on the tape, calling them locker-room banter.
Mr. Cohen worked at the Trump Organization from 2007 until after the election.
As Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Cohen said he would work in private practice and act as Mr. Trump’s personal attorney.
“I am the fix-it guy,” he said in an interview in January 2017 before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
Ms. Clifford has appeared in about 150 adult films, and was considered among the industry's biggest stars when the then-27-year-old met Mr. Trump at the American Century Championship in 2006, held at Edgewood Tahoe golf course in Nevada.
Another adult-film star, Jessica Drake, later alleged in an October 2016 news conference that Mr. Trump kissed her and two other women without permission in a hotel suite after the same 2006 golf event.
“I did not sign [a nondisclosure agreement], nor have I received any money for coming forward,” Ms. Drake said this week in an emailed statement. “I spoke out because it was the right thing to do.”
A White House official responded to questions about Ms. Drake by referring toa previous statement by the Trump campaign, which called her account “totally false and ridiculous.”
Can You Believe What Michael Cohen Just Said at the Trump Trial?
The star witness in the former President’s criminal trial is also the most aggrieved and seemingly unreliable one.
After Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, was released from prison, in 2020, he became very online.
He launched a podcast, “Mea Culpa,” with the goal of righting “the wrongs he perpetuated on behalf of his former boss,” according to the show’s description on Apple Podcasts.
Early episodes featured Rosie O’Donnell and Anthony Scaramucci discussing the cult of Trump; more recently, Cohen had brought on the Navy cryptologist turned cable-news commentator Malcolm Nance and the former Trump ghostwriter Tony Schwartz.
On TikTok, Cohen has posted gleefully about the prospect of the former President, who is currently on trial in Manhattan, going to prison.
(“Trump 2024? More like Trump twenty to twenty-four years,” he said during one of his nightly live streams.)
On X, Cohen has even started openly praising the current President.
“Thank you @POTUS @JoeBiden,” he wrote, in response to an interview that Biden did with CNN about the protests on college campuses. “There is no place in this country, or the world, for anti-semitism, racism or hate!”
He who once endeavored to own the libs has set out to court them.
Though this strategy has earned Cohen a decent audience on social media—more than six hundred thousand followers on X, and nearly three hundred thousand on TikTok, where his live-stream viewers have been sending him donations—it presents a problem for the prosecutors in Trump’s criminal trial, who are relying on Cohen as their star witness.
In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign-finance violations, in connection with hush money that he paid to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 Presidential election.
He has now testified that Trump expressly asked him to do this.
Basically, the case against the former President is riding on the willingness of a jury to believe the words of a notorious turncoat—a man who went from vowing to “take a bullet” for Trump to writing memoirs literally titled “Disloyal” and “Revenge.”
A man used to bluffing, bootlicking, and bullying for a living, who has also admitted to lying to Congress.
A man who has nothing left to lose by testifying against his old boss.
Back in 2019, there were lawyers in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office who were opposed to bringing the case against Trump on the ground that it would have to rely too heavily on Cohen, who was unreliable.
“He struck me as a somewhat feral creature,” one former prosecutor, who found Cohen credible, wrote.
The first month of Trump’s trial has been, in some ways, a long setup for Cohen’s testimony, with prosecutors calling other witnesses in the hope of corroborating in advance as much as they could of what would later come out of Cohen’s mouth.
Many of these witnesses could not resist taking shots at Cohen.
Hope Hicks, Trump’s former communications aide, said that Cohen was a “fixer” only in the sense that “he first broke it.”
Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels’s former lawyer, referred to Cohen as a “pants-on-fire kind of guy.”
Even Cohen’s former First Republic banker, Gary Farro, acknowledged that Cohen was a difficult customer.
“Everything was urgent with Michael Cohen,” he said.
Cohen may have been “highly excitable,” as Davidson put it, but prosecutors need jurors to believe that he wasn’t so excitable that he then went rogue in covering up a scandal for the future President.
It doesn’t help that he always appears shifty, even on the witness stand—his eyebrows sit high on his face, making him look like a basset hound, and one brow naturally arches about an inch above the other.
On Monday, his first day on the stand, he wore a light-pink tie.
“He said to me, ‘This is a disaster, total disaster,’ ” Cohen told the court, describing Trump’s reaction to finding out that, in the aftermath of the “Access Hollywood” tape’s release, Daniels was shopping around a story about having sex with him in 2006.
“‘Women are going to hate me,’ ” Cohen continued, mimicking Trump’s intonation.
“‘Guys may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’”
Cohen said that Trump instructed him to hammer out a deal to buy the rights to the story from Daniels and to delay payment for as long as possible:
“What he had said to me is ‘What I want you to do is just push it out as long as you can. Just get past the election, because, if I win, it has no relevance, I will be President. If I lose, I don’t even care.’ ”
These quotes sound like Trump.
But no other witness can corroborate them.
When it comes to these and other conversations between Cohen and his old boss, prosecutors can only offer jurors Cohen’s word.
To try to give them a sense of who they were listening to, the Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger prompted Cohen to speak about his childhood on Long Island, as the son of Holocaust survivors, about the heady early days of his employment at the Trump Organization, and about his dismay in late 2016 when he found out that Trump had cut the size of his annual bonus.
“I was truly insulted, personally hurt by it,” Cohen said. “Didn’t understand it. Made no sense.”
Last week, when Stormy Daniels took the stand, Hoffinger struggled to control the actress’s testimony.
Judge Juan Merchan became frustrated with the amount of graphic detail that Daniels gave about her sexual encounter with Trump—missionary position, no condom—and Trump’s lawyers asked for a mistrial.
There was reason to expect that Cohen’s testimony would be equally dramatic: Trump’s lawyers had already complained to the judge about Cohen bashing the former President on TikTok while Trump himself is under a gag order that prohibits him from posting about Cohen and the other witnesses in the case.
But Cohen’s testimony on Monday was surprisingly subdued. He kept his answers to Hoffinger’s questions short and to the point, accepted her premises, and often looked to her for approval when he was done responding.
“Did you at times during your work for the Trump Organization, for Mr. Trump, bully people for him?” Hoffinger asked. “Yes, Ma’am,” Cohen said. “Why did you do that?” she asked, to which Cohen replied, “The only thing that was on my mind was to accomplish the task to make him happy.”
Online, Cohen may still be a feral creature, but in court he seemed thoroughly domesticated. (We have yet to see how he fares during cross-examination.)
Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, spent much of the day with his eyes closed.
He has appeared to doze through many of his days in court, but he seemed especially determined to play it cool with his old lawyer on the stand.
He didn’t whisper much in his attorneys’ ears, or slap them on the arm to get their attention.
At times, he looked engrossed as he read through documents that he’d brought with him to the defense table.
(New York magazine’s Andrew Rice reported that the pages included the latest Times voter poll.)
His lawyers objected only sparingly as Cohen testified on Monday, and called for no sidebar conversations with the judge.
The Trump courtroom has become an unofficial venue for Trump World courtiers.
On Monday, Trump was accompanied to court by Senators J. D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville.
On Tuesday, North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, the former Presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, and Representative Byron Donalds were all in attendance.
I wondered if, as they watched Cohen get questioned, they considered the possibility of their own future of apostasy.
Trump is always Trump, but his hangers-on are all a wrong turn or two from becoming Michael Cohens.
Earlier in the trial, Keith Davidson, Daniels’s former lawyer who worked with Cohen to arrange the hush-money payment, recalled talking to Cohen during the Presidential transition in late 2016.
Cohen had been dreaming of a big White House job, but he ultimately settled for the non-governmental title of personal attorney to the President.
“I thought he was gonna kill himself,” Davidson said, of Cohen.
On Monday, Hoffinger asked Cohen if he had been disappointed not to get the job of White House chief of staff.
“I didn’t believe the role was right for me or that I was even competent to be chief of staff,” he said. “But I wanted to at least be considered. It was more about my ego than anything.”
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