Hope Hicks testifies
It seems the news has already moved on from Hope Hicks, judging by the headlines. But there were gasps in the overflow room when she enterered the Manhattan courtoom Friday to testify under subpoena in Donald Trump’s criminal trial. When she briefly broke down on the stand and the judge called a pause, newsies scrambled to report the drama.
But ahead of that, Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine posted a thread with observations on Hicks worth noting:
Some things to know about the prosecution’s next witness, Hope Hicks: her relationship with the Trump family began in 2012 when she began doing PR for Ivanka from an outside firm. She joined the Trump Org. By the winter of 2014, when Donald Trump was preparing to run for the GOP nom, she was part of a tiny circle of his trusted advisers.
For most of the 2016 campaign, the staff was the Island of Misfit Toys. Hardly anyone had traditional political experience. At least half the staffers were possibly literally, clinically insane. Her general competence and normal-ness and likability made her an outlier.
She was good at managing the principal. She was good under pressure. And she maintained good relationships with the mainstream press. She entered the WH as a senior adviser and kept a small office within earshot of the Oval. Close enough that Trump would just yell out for her.
Unlike most who stayed in the Trump orbit through the administration, she never really succumbed to a bunker mentality. She never got stuck in their information bubble. She maintained connections to and perspective from the world outside MAGA. She was not an ideologue.
But for a long time she was inclined to make excuses for her boss. How else do you wake up and go to work each day and spend your working hours putting out the fires he seemed to have a pathological impulse to spark? For anyone who stayed, there was a lot of self deception.
Hope Hicks is not Fawn Hall. She was genuinely powerful and central to the Trump operation. But she’s also not John Dean. She was compelled to testify, just as she was compelled to take part in various hearings and investigations over the years.
She is a powerful witness for the prosecution because the public is so familiar with her image and the perception of her closeness to the former president, though they have not been close in years and have only spoken a few times in passing since 2021.
She has a long and near-photographic memory and she witnessed more than most, but anyone expecting her to offer some sort of operatic betrayal of her former boss will probably be disappointed. That’s not her style.
Aside from hearings or investigations, she has never spoken on the record. She will do what the prosecution requires & then she will return to private life. She does not want a book or cable contract. She does not seek forgiveness or understanding from the Trump-critical public.
Nuzzi profiled Hicks for GQ in 2016 and later for New York Magazine and provides links.
The Trump campaign grew frantic at the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in October 2016 and went immediately into damage-control mode that might have been pointless. “The tape was damaging. This was a crisis,” Hicks said. “I think [Trump] felt like it was pretty standard stuff for two guys chatting with each other,” she added.
Jurors received only a transcript.
Hicks had one response: “Deny, deny, deny.”
Hicks claimed not to have been privy to any of Trump’s hush-money efforts involving Trump affairs with former Playboy model Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels.
In testimony on Trump’s state of mind in 2018 when the Daniels payments became public, Hicks told the court, “I think Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and it would’ve been bad to have that story come out before the election,” Hicks said.
It was a “mic-drop moment,” Greenberg told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, a “nail in the coffin moment” for Trump.
Regarding Cohen telling the New York Times he’d paid hush money to Stormy Daniels on his own, Hicks testified:
“I’d say that would be out of character for Michael,” Hicks responded. “I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person.”
Of Cohen, Hicks said on cross-examination:
“He liked to call himself a fixer, or ‘Mr. Fix it’ – and it was only because he first broke it that he was able to then fix it,” Hicks said, laughing.
Now we wait for Michael Cohen to testify. Mic-drop or not, Trump’s defense only needs one juror to vote to acquit. To be continued.
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