Why I Wouldn't Take Hope Hicks Home to Mother
And she's oh, so good,
And she's oh, so fine,
And she's oh, so healthy,
In her body and her mind.
She's a well respected woman about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.
~ The Kinks
I'm going to miss Hope Hicks. Trump's communications director, who reportedly is stepping down, is gorgeous. But maybe too gorgeous. A former fashion model, the 29-year old beauty is always dressed to the nines and made up to perfection, her hair an inerrant cascade of ethereal fluff right out of a TV shampoo commercial. She also always has that air of sublime self-awareness as if she's nonstop posing for a photo shoot. I've been in the White House plenty of times over my government career and the average woman working there definitely does not look like she just stepped out of Glamour magazine. Most range in appearance from Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Nicole Wallace, i.e., frumpy white trash to soberly attractive. There's just something unreal about Hope. And this is why (if I were young and single again) I wouldn't take her home to Mom.
Me & MomI actually reached out to Hope during the campaign for a story I was working on. My heart all aflutter, I sat around waiting for the phone to ring, naively thinking that campaign communications people's job was to answer journalists' questions. Never heard back from her - or any other Trump "communications" people for that matter. Folks say Hope continued to remain mum in her White House job. Ever hear her speak? She and Jared could thrive in a monastery. And when there's only Fake News in the land, can you blame her for shunning reporters?
This week, Hope confessed before the House Intelligence Committee that she occasionally tells "white lies" on behalf of the president. Shocking in an administration known as sentinels of the truth. How about when she said about her boss, "He has built great relationships throughout his life and treats everyone with respect. He is brilliant with a great sense of humor...and an amazing ability to make people feel special and aspire to be more than even they thought possible." Like, say, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions? The multitude of women who have come out accusing him of sexual assault? His three cuckolded wives? Crooked Hillary? Little Marco Rubio? Lyin' Ted Cruz? Everybody who works at the FBI? Yourself, after your boss tells you, "you're the best piece of tail he's ever had"? Okay, here's one example of someone Trump made feel truly, $130,000 worth of special - Stormy Daniels.
Certainly, Hope had big Gucci loafers to fill after succeeding Anthony "The Mouth" Scaramucci as Trump communications guru, in the job for all of a week. But she brought a lot to the position, having worked on Ivanka's fashion line and, uh, what else?
Another reason I wouldn't take Hope home to Mom is her taste in men, having dated a married Trumpista storm trooper (Lewandowski) and an inveterate twice married wife beater (Porter - about whom Hope wrote in a White House statement for chief of staff John Kelly, "Rob Porter is a man of true integrity and honor and I can't say enough good things about him"). How could a simple guy like me meet those standards?
Nope. Mom wouldn't have approved. You can take the girl off the farm, but not the farm out of the farm girl. Manhattan and Greenwich, CT glitterati like Hope left her cold. And that went for my father too, who warned me to "watch out for those big city sharpies." Tie me to the mast and plug my ears with beeswax to avoid succumbing to the seductive calls of a siren like Hope Hicks.
Seriously though, it's time for Hope to escape Planet Chaos and get her head on straight. The backbiting, incompetence, disorder and just plain runaway lunacy of this failing, misbegotten presidency defies any effort to cast it as anything approaching normal. Hope's task was nothing less than mission impossible. Quixotic would be an understatement. If a Looney Tunes character like Scaramucci couldn't make sense out of it, how could a grossly unqualified millennial fashion maven succeed? She was out of her depth and out of her league in a viper pit of self-aggrandizing and clueless glitzoids bent on self-destruction and staring jail time in the face.
RIP, Mom. I chose wisely.