TRUMP’S RIGHT-HAND WOMAN
Hope Hicks, just 27, is the link between Donald Trump and media hordes,
An inspirational poster hangs above the Trump Tower desk of Hope Hicks, the 27-year-old press secretary for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, squeezed in among the framed Time magazine covers of Trump and exuberant thank-you notes written in his inimitable scrawl (“Hopie — You’re the greatest!”).
“Fate whispers to the warrior, ‘You cannot withstand the storm,’ ” it reads. “And the warrior whispers back, ‘I am the storm.’ ”
Hicks, a one-time champion lacrosse player who signed a Ford modelling contract as a teenager, had never worked in politics before last year, and her widest exposure had been as a co-star in a Nickelodeon children’s television special about golf.
Now, she plays confidante and sometime gatekeeper to the presumptive Republican nominee for president and, improbably, serves as Trump’s sole liaison to the teeming national press corps.
Hillary Clinton employs a half-dozen battle-hardened media handlers who field hundreds of daily requests. Trump has Hicks, who was working for his daughter Ivanka’s luxury lines and for the Trump real estate brand when the candidate called her to his office in early 2015 and declared that she was joining his campaign.
Hicks had trained at Hiltzik Strategies, the powerful public relations firm that represents Hollywood clients and corporate executives, before Ivanka Trump brought her in-house. She was commuting from an apartment she shared with her sister in Greenwich, Conn., above the dive bar where her father had his first beer at 18.
Suddenly, she found herself a near-constant presence by Trump’s side, flying in his jet, living rent-free in a Trump-owned apartment and attending to his mercurial moods.
She is arguably the least credentialed press secretary in the modern history of presidential politics. But for journalists who cover the campaign, she is sometimes the Jekyll to Trump’s Hyde, emailing angry complaints from her mediabashing boss (“dishonest”) and often concluding with her own polite sign-off: “Best, Hope.”
“Her most important role is her bond with the candidate,” said Paul Manafort, a veteran Republican adviser who, as of last month, had been put in charge of the campaign. “She totally understands him.”
Or, as Ivanka Trump said in an interview: “My father makes people earn his trust. She’s earned his trust.”
Hicks is the third generation of her family to represent a powerful but highly controversial client. Her grandfather led public relations for Texaco during the 1970s oil crisis.
Her father, Paul B. Hicks III, represented a major tobacco company in Connecticut and later was the top communications executive for the National Football League, where he dealt with scandals over player safety and the Patriots’ deflated footballs.
Her establishment pedigree aside, Hicks does not fit the part of the typical campaign press secretary, spinning reporters and gossiping over expensed drinks on the trail.
Among journalists, Hicks is not known to wrangle, cajole or mingle, serving as more of a conduit for her intensely media-savvy boss, who likes to act as his own chief spokesman.
Unlike her Clinton counterparts, who take pains to shape their candidate’s image, Hicks is not active on Twitter and does not show up on cable talk shows. Contacted for this article, she declined to be interviewed, insisting that she did not want to draw attention away from her candidate.
Hicks — perhaps the only campaign press secretary to have been photographed as a teenager by fashion photog- rapher Bruce Weber, in a campaign for Naturalizer shoes — favours Burberry trench coats and heels, a break from the scruffy ranks of harried campaign operatives. One reporter recalled staggering into a New Hampshire rally after a snowstorm, soaked in water and ice, only to find Hicks dressed impeccably, her makeup unfussed.
Trump seems to appreciate her friendly, disciplined presence.
“I’m lucky to have her,” Trump said in a telephone interview. “She’s got very good judgment. She will often give advice, and she’ll do it in a very low-key manner, so it doesn’t necessarily come in the form of advice. But it’s delivered very nicely.”
Hicks grew up in Greenwich, Conn., swimming and golfing. When she was in sixth grade, a neighbour invited Hicks and her sister to a Ralph Lauren tryout; soon their photographs were in Bloomingdale’s.
She made a cameo on Guiding Light, appeared on the covers of young adult paperbacks like Gossip Girl and once read lines for a film role with Alec Baldwin.
At age 13, Hicks told Greenwich Magazine, for a cover story about the Hicks sisters’ modelling careers, that she was “not ready to decide if modelling is what I want to do with my life.”
“If the acting thing doesn’t work out,” she said, “I could really see myself in politics. Who knows?”
The Hicks sisters earned enough from modelling to file tax returns. But Hope preferred lacrosse, leading Greenwich High School to a state championship and later playing at Southern Methodist University, where she majored in English.
Trump, asked if Hicks would have a spot in his administration, replied, “She would definitely have a role.” How about press secretary? “I don’t want to comment on that,” he said. “It’s too early. I don’t want to be making those prognostications yet. But she’ll certainly be involved with us. She’s terrific.”