Hope Hicks, the 28-year-old former model and college athlete who handled the media during Donald Trump’s campaign, will be the president’s next Communications Director, Daily Caller is reporting.
She has mostly stayed behind the scenes (not appearing on television, for example), but she has been photographed many times at Trump campaign and White House events.
Hope Hicks, White House director of strategic communications.
However, The New York Times is reporting that Hicks would just be taking the position on a temporary basis.
Re Daily Caller on Hicks – she’s playing role of interim comms director,not expected to take title, or move desks, helping find perm person
The White House has now confirmed that account.
WH makes it official: Hope Hicks is Interim White House Communications Director. Permanent director to be named “at appropriate time”
Hicks was a child model, for Ralph Lauren and on book covers. You can see some of her child modeling photos here and here. She also posed for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line. See that photo here.
Daily Caller reported on August 16, through a source, that Trump has offered the job to Hicks, and she has accepted it. She was already serving as Trump’s director of strategic communications, which, according to Daily Caller, is a job that kept her more behind-the-scenes. Other sites, such as CNN, then reported that Hicks will be Communications Director.
White House Senior Advisor, Kellyanne Conway (L), stands with Hope Hicks, during a news conference with U.S. President Donald Trump and King Abdullah II of Jordan.
The Comm Director position has been one of instability. Several people have cycled through the position, most dramatically Anthony Scaramucci, who only lasted a few controversy-filled days, undone by an uncouth conversation with a reporter about other White House officials.
(L-R) White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway; Hope Hicks, White House Director of Strategic Communications; and Omarosa Manigault, Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison, listen during a daily press briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room February 14, 2017 at the White House.
In contrast to Scaramucci’s style, Hicks is known for her aversion to being front-and-center. You don’t see her on TV like Kellyanne Conway, and she isn’t whipping out tweets like Scaramucci.
Hope Hicks with Steve Bannon.
Who is Hope Hicks? How did she rise so fast, so soon? Trump seems to be narrowing the circle around him to family members and Trump Organization loyalists and weeding out the political types (like Reince Priebus and, maybe, if rumors are correct, Steve Bannon).
Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway (L) and White House Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks are seen on the tarmac of Newark Liberty Airport.
Hicks has worked for Trump and his daughter Ivanka since before his presidential campaign. She got her start working on PR campaigns for his company and then for his daughter’s. She had no political experience when she joined the campaign, but during it she was considered a media gatekeeper, closely guarding access to Trump.
Hope Hicks, White House Director of Strategic Communications, steps off Air Force One upon arrival at Newark Liberty Airport in Newark, New Jersey on June 9, 2017.
Hicks is traveling with US President Donald Trump to his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club to spend the weekend.
Hicks’ financial disclosure form shows she earned $141,417 as a communications consultant for Donald Trump for president, as well as $71,689 as communications director for the Trump Organization, and $21,830 working for Trump for America.
i think i can honestly say this is the first time i’ve heard hope hicks speak
Trump has called Hicks nicknames like “Hopester.” The trust that Trump has in her led Politico to dub her the “Untouchable Hope Hicks.”
She has spoken effusively about the president. “I promise, he’s a good person!” Politico quoted her as telling naysayers at a family wedding. In turn, reported Politico, “She is protected, in a world of rival power centers, by the deep bond she shares with the man at the top.”
Hicks stands in the background as Trump signs executive orders.
She was at his side when he controversially “left open the possibility” of firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller in an interview with The New York Times, according to Politico.
Hope Hicks.
Conservative writer Mike Cernovich (who has been labeled “Alt-right”), claimed in a Medium article that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster once said he is “not going to take orders from that high schooler,” referring to Hope Hicks.
Hope Hicks arrives at Trump Tower.
Town and Country Magazine called Hicks an “enigma” and reported that she wrote a line in a Trump speech that said, “We are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms.”
According to the Town and Country profile, Hicks grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut where she “swam at Greenwich Country Club, was co-captain of the lacrosse team at Greenwich High School, and played lacrosse all four years in college.”
Hope Hicks is on the left.
The magazine reports that she also was a model. “At 11, she and her sister were hired for a Ralph Lauren campaign. She was also tapped as the face of the Hourglass Adventures, a series of novels about a time-traveling 10-year-old.” She also had a Guiding Light cameo, according to the magazine.
Her father, Paul Hicks, is a public relations executive who handled communications for the NFL and, reports Town and Country, both her parents worked in politics; “her mother as legislative aide for a Democrat from Tennessee and her father as chief of staff for a Republican congressman from Connecticut.”
From left to right: Hope Hicks, White House Director of Strategic Communications, Steve Bannon, Chief Strategist, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and White House Policy Advisor Stephen Miller walk across the South Lawn of the White House.
According to The Washington Post, Hicks became acquainted with Trump in 2012 when she joined a New York PR firm and was assigned to work on various Trump-related accounts. She ended up working for Ivanka Trump before Trump decided to make her his presidential campaign press secretary.
She attended Southern Methodist University.