Although Trump had known about Hope Hicks’ corona-positive diagnosis since Thursday, October 1, afternoon, and had already tested positive on his rapid test, though still waiting for the report of a more reliable PCR test, Trump presented the news as a total surprise in an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Thursday evening.
“She did test positive. I just heard about this,” Trump said on air that evening. “And I just went out with a test, I’ll see — you know, ’cause we spend a lot of time — and the first lady just went out with a test also,” Trump added. “So whether we quarantine, or whether we have it, we don’t know.”
A few hours after the show, early Friday morning on October 2, Trump tweeted the positive results from his PCR test. “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!”
Couple of hours before the momentous announcement, Trump had extended his warmest sympathies to the suspect who had most likely transmitted the virus to the president and the first lady: “Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for Covid 19. Terrible! The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process!”
In a cryptic message, likely implicating the deep state for Hope Hicks contracting the infection, Trump vaguely suggested that “people from the military or law enforcement” who he said were inclined to hug his team in a show of gratitude, might have infected her: “She’s a very warm person with them.”
Aaron Blake, writing for the Washington Post on October 2, gave a rather strange title [1] to his report: “Trump’s pre-spin seems to blame military, police interactions for coronavirus diagnosis.”
“So, I just went for a test, and we’ll see what happens. I mean, who knows? But you know her very well. She’s fantastic. And she’s done a great job,” Trumps said regarding Hope Hicks testing positive for COVID-19.
“But it’s very, very hard when you are with people from the military or … law enforcement, and they come over to you, and they want to hug you, and they want to kiss you, because we really have done a good job for them,” Trump added. “And you get close, and things happen.”
30-year-old femme fatale, Hope Hicks, is a political adviser serving as a senior counselor to President Trump since March. Hicks previously served as White House communications director from August 2017 until March 29, 2018. From January to August 2017, she was White House director of strategic communications.
But her official designations don’t do justice to her immense clout in the White House and the Trump family. Maggie Haberman wrote an informative biographical account [2] of Hope Hicks in a February 2018 article for the New York Times:
“Ms. Hicks, 29, a former model who joined Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign without any experience in politics, became known as one of the few aides who understood Mr. Trump’s personality and style and could challenge the president to change his views.
“Her title belied the extent of her power within the West Wing — after John F. Kelly was appointed White House chief of staff, she had more access to the Oval Office than almost any other staff member. Her own office, which she inherited after the departure of another Trump confidant, Keith Schiller, was just next door.
“Most significantly, Mr. Trump felt a more personal comfort with Ms. Hicks than he has established with almost any of his other, newer advisers since coming to Washington. And for a politician who relies so heavily on what is familiar to him, her absence could be jarring …”
Haberman was clearly insinuating to the fact that Hope Hicks relationship with President Trump had not entirely been professional. She had occupied a special place in Trump’s heart with her attractive looks, beauty-pageant charisma and an intimate understanding of Trump’s psychological attitudes and mindset. Sky News posted a video [3] in 2018 in which Donald Trump was seen hugging and kissing Hope Hicks.
This fact also elucidates visibly tense moments Trump and Melania have had in their matrimonial life when Hope Hicks served as White House communications director until March 2018 when she had to quit the Trump administration because she spilled the beans on Trump’s 2016 election campaign when she was summoned by the House Intelligence Committee in February 2018.
Haberman adds in the report: “Ms. Hicks resignation came a day after she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee, telling the panel that in her job, she had occasionally been required to tell white lies but had never lied about anything connected to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election …
“Ms. Hicks’s first association with the Trump family was working with Mr. Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, on her personal apparel and licensing brand about six years ago. When Mr. Trump was planning his campaign in spring 2015, he told Ms. Hicks he was pulling her from Ms. Trump’s team to put her on his small political staff despite her lack of experience.
“In recent weeks, her personal life drew unwanted attention when it was reported that she had dated Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary who resigned under pressure over allegations that he had abused his two former wives.”
It’s pertinent to mention that Hope Hicks broke up with Rob Porter in December 2018. For two years between her resignation from the Trump administration in March 2018 to March 2020, she worked for Fox Corporation as its chief communications officer and executive vice president, drawing a million-dollar salary.
She was re-appointed senior counselor to President Trump in March, but it’s quite likely that she turned rogue and her loyalty to the Trump family was compromised during the intervening two years, and she colluded with Trump’s adversaries in the deep state and the rival political organization to thwart Trump’s re-election bid.
Writing for the Washington Post Friday, October 9, Sarah Ellison and John Dawsey note [4]: “Hope Hicks proximity to Trump drew her into myriad scandals, including the drafting of a highly misleading news release that misrepresented Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer. The Mueller Report would mention her name 183 times.
“The scrutiny drove her to the brink, colleagues say. Trump never wanted her to leave. A photo taken of the two before she departed was later compared to something out of a real-life Greek myth — the president appearing to reach for her as she walks away, her right hand behind her and still in his grasp …
“In June 2019, she was called back to Washington to testify again before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the Mueller investigation. In the hearing, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) referred to her three times as ‘Ms. Lewandowski,’ a slip that her allies say was a deliberate effort to evoke reports that had linked her in the early days on the campaign to Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.”
Since her name was mentioned “183 times” in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Russiagate” investigation, it’s obvious the national security establishment had a lot of compromising material on her that allegedly “drove her to the brink” where she had to make a choice between her political loyalty to her longtime patron and her career.
After returning to the White House in March, she even tried to sabotage Trump’s electoral campaign by giving politically misleading advices: “The quality of Hope Hicks advice is said to vary dramatically. She had Trump’s ear at the height of the racial-justice protests that roiled Washington in June, one of the small group of advisers who helped plan his walk across Lafayette Square from the Rose Garden to the fire-damaged St. John’s Church for the controversial photo op that was preceded by the violent dispersal of protesters from the vicinity by police in riot gear.”
In addition, the family of Hope Hicks has a political background. Her mother, Caye Ann (Cavender) Hicks, was an administrative aide to Ed Jones, a Democratic congressman from Tennessee.
Here, allow me to clarify that COVID-19 is a pandemic that could randomly infect anybody, but more than 90% fatalities in the US have occurred in people who were over 55 years old. Younger people, like Hicks, typically have robust natural immunity against the contagion, whereas Trump is 74 years old and was at a high risk because of his age.
Though Trump has miraculously survived the infection, and even boasted of developing “immunity against the virus” Sunday, at his age, corona-positive diagnosis was nothing less than an attempted assassination that could have incapacitated him for weeks if not to his outright demise.
Maggie Haberman further notes in the aforementioned New York Times article: “Ms. Hicks also had the ability to stop Mr. Trump from focusing on an issue he was angry about, and sometimes shield other members of the staff from Mr. Trump’s anger.
“While Ms. Hicks and Mr. John Kelly developed a functional, respectful relationship, he considered her access to the president to be a challenge to the command-and-control system he tried to enforce, according to several White House aides.
“Even those in the West Wing who did not like her approach feared her power, and worried about crossing her. Before leaving the White House in March 2018, she told colleagues that she had accomplished what she felt she could with a job that made her one of the most powerful people in Washington.”
Lastly, though the mainstream media cheered it as poetic justice that befell Trump for flouting safety precautions amid the coronavirus outbreak, it’s not simply about health risks posed to the president and the first lady due to contracting the infection. But the diagnosis has disrupted the entire electoral campaign of the Republican Party at a critical juncture in the weeks before the presidential elections.
Although “October surprises” are common in the electoral politics of the US, when elections are only weeks away in November and canvassing of electorate by political contenders reaches a crescendo, never in the entire political history of the US an “October surprise” has downright incapacitated a presidential contender running for re-election from electioneering for make-or-break weeks before the election.
Citations:
[1] Trump’s pre-spin seems to blame military, police interactions for coronavirus diagnosis:
[2] Hope Hicks to Leave Post as White House Communications Director:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/us/politics/hope-hicks-resign-communications-director.html
[3] Donald Trump seen hugging and kissing with top aide Hope Hicks in 2018:
[4] Hope Hicks returned to the White House to pull Trump across the finish line:
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