Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
In an administration rocked by staff shakeups, resignations and infighting, Hope Hicks is a survivor.
The 29-year-old White House communications director has been a steady hand at the center of Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency, outlasting a rotating cast of political operatives and weighing in on everything from which media interviews to grant to the administration’s response to allegations of Russian collusion.
“She has a great ‘Trump radar’ [in] understanding how he thinks...She loves him like a father in some ways, and I think that is an important loyalty to the family,” Brad Parscale, digital director for Trump’s 2016 campaign, told Newsweek.
Now, that allegiance is being tested because federal investigators have sought to interview her as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s wide-ranging Russia investigation. The White House didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to questions about Hicks's status in the federal inquiries, and her personal attorney, Robert Trout, declined comment. But she is one of the few people who could provide deep insight into the president’s thinking—and, moreover, his reactions to the scandal that looms over his presidency.
So what do we think?
Will Hope Hicks crack under pressure from Robert Mueller, or will she stay loyal to "Daddy?"
Whatever happens this whole thing just gets creepier every day.
Politico reported Thursday that Andy Hemming resigned from his position as the White House communications team’s director of rapid response on Monday.
The 31-year-old former Republican National Committee staffer, who was profiled by Politico’s Annie Karni this month, was responsible for finding positive mainstream media news stories about the Trump administration and recirculating those reports to key reporters and talking heads. Hemming’s goal was to ultimately create more mainstream coverage about positive moments for the Trump administration on the very networks the president routinely bashes and refers to as “fake news,” according to Karni’s piece.
Every presidential administration has staffers dedicated to monitoring the press and pushing out stories related to favorable moments. But Trump’s relationship with the press and responses to news coverage is unprecedented. For instance, Vice News reported this month that the president receives a folder filled with positive news about himself twice a day ― a report previous presidents apparently did not receive.
Hemming’s role in the administration was a bizarre one, considering his boss regularly picks public feuds with journalists and mainstream news outlets he was required to target with positive stories.
They're spinning this to suggest that Hemming's departure was a mutual decision with the White House, but I think we can all surmise that the guy probably left in frustration at how freaking hard his job was trying to find any positive stories about the shitgibbon.
Literally every time that Trump does anything that might be an opportunity for some positive media coverage, he almost immediately follows it up with something incredibly negative that then become the bigger story.
Doing a job like this would absolutely put your mental health at risk.
So i think this Hemming guy is making the smart decisions to bail before his mind snaps and he starts wandering the halls of the White House babbling to himself.
President Trump has decided to remove Anthony Scaramucci from his position as communications director, three people close to the decision said Monday, relieving him just days after Mr. Scaramucci unloaded a crude verbal tirade against other senior members of the president’s senior staff.
Mr. Scaramucci’s abrupt removal came just 10 days after the wealthy New York financier was brought on to the West Wing staff, a move that convulsed an already chaotic White House and led to the departures of Sean Spicer, the former press secretary, and Reince Priebus, the president’s first chief of staff.
The decision to remove Mr. Scaramucci, who had boasted about reporting directly to the president not the chief of staff, John F. Kelly, came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said. Mr. Kelly made clear to members of the White House staff at a meeting Monday morning that he is in charge.
Okay so I think currently Scaramucci holds the record for the shortest White House tenure in history. Especially considering the fact that the Mooch did not officially have the job because his business affairs were not yet settled.
Is there a such thing as a negative number tenure at the White House.
Right now somewhere Reince Priebus is bent over with laughter.
By the way keep in mind that the hunt is now on for a THIRD White House Communications director, and this presidency is only seven months old.
I will share a few excerpts here for you to read, which, in the interest of accuracy, I will present unfiltered.
Without further ado let the latest national embarrassment begin:
On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy. Earlier in the night, I’d tweeted, citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me.
“Who leaked that to you?” he asked. I said I couldn’t give him that information. He responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” he said. I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source. He continued to press me and complain about the staff he’s inherited in his new job. “I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can’t help themselves,” he said. “You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.”
So in the interest of preserving what made America great, Scaramucci wanted this reporter to reveal his source in defiance of the 1st Amendment.
“Is it an assistant to the President?” he asked. I again told him I couldn’t say. “O.K., I’m going to fire every one of them, and then you haven’t protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks.”
I asked him why it was so important for the dinner to be kept a secret. Surely, I said, it would become public at some point. “I’ve asked people not to leak things for a period of time and give me a honeymoon period,” he said. “They won’t do it.” He was getting more and more worked up, and he eventually convinced himself that Priebus was my source.
“They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ”
Does he kiss Trump's ass with that mouth?
So apparently Scaramucci was convinced that this was the work of Reince "once and" Priebus and he was determined that this reporter, Ryan Lizza, should confirm that.
He even went so far as to suggest that he had called the FBI and Justice Department about this matter, and when queried further by Lizza responded in third person:
“The swamp will not defeat him,” he said, breaking into the third person. “They’re trying to resist me, but it’s not going to work. I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves.”
Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”
Okay first off this is a picture of Stephen Bannon.....
....so let's put to the rest any idea that he has even SEEN his cock in the last ten yeas much less put his mouth anywhere near it.
And then things got weird. (I'm sorry, weirder.)
“What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people,” he told me.
(Wait, did he just threaten to kill White House staff members?)
He cryptically suggested that he had more information about White House aides. “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago,” he said. (There's that third person again.) “This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice.”
“What?” I interjected.
“Well, the felony, they’re gonna get prosecuted, probably, for the felony.” He added, “The lie detector starts—” but then he changed the subject and returned to what he thought was the illegal leak of his financial-disclosure forms. I asked if the President knew all of this.
“Well, he doesn’t know the extent of all that, he knows about some of that, but he’ll know about the rest of it first thing tomorrow morning when I see him.”
Scaramucci said he had to get going. “Yeah, let me go, though, because I’ve gotta start tweeting some shit to make this guy crazy.”
And the Mooch did indeed tweet.
However later he must have had a moment of sanity, and deleted it.
Now keep in mind that this is the new Communications Director.
You know, the guy who is supposed to help his president more effectively get his message out to the people.
If have not yet had enough of the Mooch, well you are in luck because he called into CNN yesterday to "clarify" all of this for us.
Remember, he is supposed to be the new Communications Director.
President Trump has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000. 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.
Uh....WTF?
Okay look maybe Hope Hicks is such an over the moon fangirl that she actually wrote this to describe some alternate reality in which she envisions Donald Trump having these attributes.
I mean I don't know the woman, so maybe.
But the thing is that it sounds very suspiciously like the kind of statement that Trump used to make about himself back in the 70's, 80's, and 90's while pretending to be his own spokesman.
Here is what he said as "John Miller" courtesy of the Daily Wire:
“Miller” bragged, “Actresses just call to see if they can go out with him and things.” Madonna “wanted to go out with him.” “Miller” boasted that despite living with Maples, Trump had “three other girlfriends.” “Miller” told Carswell why Trump supposedly dumped Maples for the Italian model Carla Bruni, asserting, “He really didn’t want to make a commitment. He’s coming out of a marriage, and he’s starting to do tremendously well financially.”
Both Carla Bruni and Madonna denied ever wanting anything to do with Trump.
Like I said maybe this Hope Hicks woman is just that smitten with the legend that is Doanld Trump, however evidence suggests that only one that smitten with Donald Trump is in fact Donald Trump.
All I know for sure is that the very fact that we suspect that it MIGHT be coming from Trump himself, means we are very, very far down that rabbit hole.
Former Trump adviser Carter Page has declined to provide records of his communications with Russians to the Senate intelligence committee, saying that anything of note has already been recorded by former President Barack Obama’s administration.
“I suspect the physical reaction of the Clinton/Obama regime perpetrators will be more along the lines of severe vomiting when all the facts are eventually exposed regarding the steps taken by the US Government to influence the 2016 election,” Mr Page wrote in response to an April letter he received from the Senate committee.
What Page is arguing here is that he was under surveillance by the Justice Department so they already have access to any of his communications with the Russians.
However by not cooperating Page is presenting a completely different version of himself than the one who appeared on every cable news outlet that would have him proclaiming that he did nothing wrong.
Which is something that the Senate Committee noticed as well:
A joint statement from the top senators on the intelligence committee, chairman Richard Burr and ranking member Mark Warner, said that they will continue to investigate Russia’s influence in the 2016 election whether Mr Page cooperates or not.
“Three days ago, Carter Page told Fox News he was cooperating with the committee’s investigation into Russian activities surrounding the 2016 Election,” the statement said. “Today we have learned that may not be the case.”
The two senators continued to say that Mr Page had previously indicated to the committee that he wanted to cooperate with the investigation and that doing so would only help to resolve claims that he colluded with Russians. Federal investigators believe that he was knowingly or unknowingly being cultivated as a Russian asset by Russian spies. Mr Page denies all these allegations.
So are we taking bets as to whether Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone will follow Page's example.
My money says that Page will not be the only one to try and obstruct with investigation.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, seeking to accelerate its broad investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election, has asked a number of high-profile Trump campaign associates to hand over emails and other records of communications and dealings with Russian officials and businesspeople.
The requests, made in letters sent by the committee in the past 10 days, are a preliminary step and open the way to subpoenas for anyone who does not comply, said two officials with knowledge of the Senate investigation. They said Senator Richard M. Burr, a North Carolina Republican who is chairman of the committee, was prepared to compel the Trump associates to turn over their records.
Among those who said they had received the requests were Roger J. Stone, an informal adviser to President Trump, and Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman, and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, were also sent letters, said the officials with knowledge of the investigation. Representatives for both men declined to comment.
The letter from the Senate committee, which was jointly signed by Senator Burr and Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who is vice chairman of the panel, asks its recipients to list all the meetings they had with Russian officials or business people from June 16, 2015, through Jan. 20, 2017. It set a May 9 deadline for a response.
Then, the committee requested that by May 19, the recipients hand over records of all communications — including emails, text messages and phone logs — with Russian officials or business people from the same period. It also asks them for information on any of their financial or real estate holdings related to Russia and to list any meetings they know of between other Trump campaign associates and Russians.
Now we're talking.
I currently have concerns about every one of the investigations into the Trump associates collusion with Russia, but I remain tentatively optimistic that one or more of these investigations will get to the truth and that we will see the end of the Trump presidency.
