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White House Communications Director Hope Hicks (right) with her colleague Trump aide, Kellyanne Conway, in the Oval Office. (Saúl Loeb / AFP)
Hope Hicks, the White House employee whose positive Covid-19 test this week predicted President Donald Trump would contract the disease, is one of the American leader’s most trusted aides with access on par with his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law. Jared. Kushner.
With just a modest break, the 31-year-old former model has been in Trump’s inner orbit since he joined his Trump Organization in 2014, longer than almost anyone else.
Hicks, who, like other Oval Office staff, has been seen near the president without a mask, showed symptoms of coronavirus Wednesday night while accompanying Trump to a campaign speech in Minnesota and later tested positive. .
Within hours, Trump announced on Twitter that he and First Lady Melania had also tested positive and would be quarantined.
Officially a counselor to the president, Hicks is a seasoned public relations specialist who guides Trump’s daily schedule, designs election messages and a daily spin on the latest controversies, and handwrites pocket talking points for his meetings.
His ability, by various accounts, is to channel Trump’s own thinking into messaging and, for media consumption, to let “Trump be Trump.”
Like Ivanka Trump, the long-haired brunette is always seen in trendy clothes and high heels, embellishing the feminine glamor that Trump likes to surround himself with.
He began working at Trump’s namesake real estate company in 2014, first as an assistant to Ivanka, but shortly for the mogul himself.
Hicks became a communications manager for his 2016 election campaign and, after succeeding, was named the White House’s director of strategic communications.
She was kept out of the limelight, never officially speaking or giving interviews, and mostly remained unsullied by the numerous controversies and investigations surrounding the Trump administration.
Hicks testified before the Justice Department and Congressional investigations into Trump’s campaign ties to Russia, but mostly refused to respond and stuck to the White House line.
It was also alleged that he had knowledge of Trump’s pre-election silence payments to two women who claimed to have had affairs with him but were not charged with any crime.
In February 2018, Hicks stumbled into his own controversy when the man he was dating, White House Secretary of Staff Rob Porter, was forced to resign over allegations of domestic abuse by his two former wives.
Hicks resigned and fled the limelight for a job in California as director of communications for the news and sports unit of the Fox media group.
Earlier this year, after Trump had lost several top administration officials and faced an uphill re-election battle, she returned to his side as a counselor and senior adviser, officially working for Kushner.
A recent Vanity Fair article said she was behind Trump’s strategy to deal with the coronavirus pandemic by holding daily press conferences, letting “Trump be Trump,” which was seen as the secret to his surprising election victory from 2016 on Democrat Hillary Clinton.
