White House senior communications aide Hope Hicks will take on the so-called “worst job in Washington” as the Trump Administration’s next Communications Director, sources close to the White House said Wednesday.
Hicks, who has been part of Donald Trump’s inner circle since shortly after he announced his run for President in 2015, will move into the big office later this week, according to reports, taking over the job most recently vacated by Anthony Scaramucci.
Until now, Hicks has been largely in the shadows, helping to craft White House communications policy, but rarely seen or heard from by anyone who isn’t a reporter seeking comment from Trump’s press department. She is key to the Trump operation, however, and has risen from the ranks of a lowly communications staffer on the campaign to one of Trump’s most trusted aides; she’s often referred to among journalists covering the White House as a gatekeeper to the President and his senior Oval Office staff.
But that doesn’t mean Hope Hicks will have an easy time handling her new role. Since the start of Trump’s transition period, the White House Communications job has remained largely unoccupied.
Jason Miller was Trump’s first choice to lead the communications department, but he was forced to abandon the position when it emerged in January that he’d had an affair with Trump surrogate A. J. Delgado, and that Delgado was expecting a child. Veteran public relations professional Mike Dubke was next up, but quit the job only three months later, after what was revealed to be a tense clash over Trump’s aggressive press strategy.
Sean Spicer was supposed to take over as a hybrid Press Secretary-Communications Director in July, but quit when he found out Donald Trump had appointed boistrous Wall Street banker Anthony Scaramucci to the comms position. “The Mooch,” as he called himself, lasted a remarkable ten days, getting booted by Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly before he’d even put his nameplate on the door.
Since then, the White House has reportedly offered the job to several other DC insiders, all of whom politely declined the opportunity to be next on the chopping block.
Now it’s Hicks’s turn to try to force the White House into obeying an over-arching communications strategy, craft a single, appealling message to the American masses, and satisfy a press gaggle that grows hungrier for blood every day. It may be a promotion, but Hicks has her work cut out for her.