Ode to Hope Hicks

I’m in the former category, and bummed that she’s leaving the job.

I met Hicks at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2015, when she had just started working with Trump and four months before he officially launched his campaign.

In our brief chat, during which I was hoping to secure a short interview with Trump, I said something about “The Apprentice” but admitted I didn’t know what network aired the show.

“I guess you’ve done your research,” Hicks quipped.

It didn’t bother me because I thought, like Trump, Hicks must have an edge.

We were in touch here and there throughout the 2016 campaign, usually with her responding to my requests for comment for a story about her candidate. She was responsive and if she thought the subject was important enough, she would arrange a phone call with Trump himself.

Heading into the 2016 Republican National Convention, where Trump was officially nominated, my editor at the Washington Examiner asked that I get an interview with Trump for a special issue of the magazine coming out the week of the convention.

By this point, Trump was the biggest, most sensational thing to happen in modern national politics, and asking that I get an interview with him was like asking CNN’s Chris Cillizza to say something original. Is it asking too much?

I emailed Hicks and asked for a phone call so I could sell her on the interview. She was receptive and said it was likely possible.

But as is often the case in setting up big interviews, it was touch-and-go for about three weeks as to when we could make it happen.

The interview would be scheduled, then Trump wouldn’t call. That happened several times, but Hicks always followed up to reschedule.

I did eventually get the interview, and was grateful Hicks made it happen.

When Hicks made it into the White House, she remained in contact with me, though she was undoubtedly busier. She once sent me a column idea which I used, and the piece was one of my top performers in online readers. (I’ll emphasize that she did not feed me a story; she sent me an idea.)

The people who don’t know her at all say the dumbest things. Tony Schwartz, who wrote Trump’s “Art of the Deal” in the 1980s, said Thursday on Twitter that Hicks “is an enabler with spectacularly bad taste in men who ended up in a hell of her own making.”

The blatant sexism in Schwartz’ statement aside, he has not worked with Trump in any meaningful capacity in decades. He certainly had no inroads to the White House.

He knows nothing about Hicks, but I’m sure some know-nothing journalist will ask him about her soon.

Schwartz wasn’t the only one resorting to sexism. New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino added on Wednesday, “Goodbye to Hope Hicks, an object lesson in the quickest way a woman can advance under misogyny: silence, beauty, and unconditional deference to men.”

What’s it called again when you question a woman’s advancement based on her looks?

Hicks is undeniably attractive, generally a good quality and one that often inspires envy in the less physically gifted. But in so much as she was silent or deferential to Trump, that was basically her job description.

As a public relations professional, your client (in this case, Trump) is the center of attention. And all good employees are certainly deferential to their bosses. If Hicks exceeded at both, that made her an invaluable asset that women and anyone should learn from.

“Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff made a similar assessment of Hicks in a February interview on MSNBC.

He said that Trump liked Hicks because “he likes people around him who he dominates who are very — who are essentially weak, who don’t speak back to him. And she does his bidding.”

Hicks doesn’t share the media’s burning, relentless hatred for Trump, but that doesn’t make her weak. It made her an excellent White House aide and, by all accounts, an important confidante to the president.

All of political Washington should be nervous that someone who isn’t as capable might take her place.