Hope Hicks is featured prominently in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff, as proven by book excerpts that have made it to the public, as reported by the Inquisitr . The tome speaks of the 29-year-old Hicks’ unlikely rise to become one of President Donald Trump’s closest confidantes, even relating Hope’s preferred manner of dressing to one that aligns with Trump’s favorite look.
“Ten days before Donald Trump’s inauguration as the forty-fifth president, a group of young Trump staffers—the men in regulation Trump suits and ties, the women in the Trump-favored look of high boots, short skirts, and shoulder-length hair—were watching President Barack Obama give his farewell speech as it streamed on a laptop in the transition offices.”
Wolff notes that Hope was a 26-year-old when she was hired onto the Trump campaign as the first official hire. Hailing from Greenwich, Connecticut, Hicks worked as a model prior to getting into the PR business and working for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line. After Ivanka captured Hope for her dad’s political campaign in 2015, Hicks took the political ride of a lifetime to become the gatekeeper to President Trump.
Michael writes about Hope’s family, who worried about Hicks “having been taken captive” into the Trump world, with friends and loved ones joking that Hope would need therapy once her time in the White House was done. Wolff describes Hicks as a young woman who was inexperienced but “famous among campaign reporters for her hard-to-maneuver-in short skirts.”
The overall tenor of Hope’s portrayal in the best-seller paints her as a “yes woman” who is way too overeager to seek Trump’s approval. Fearful of making errors, Hicks was protected by Trump from blame — an act that baffled others, claimed the author. Hope rose in the ranks to become Trump’s most trusted aide, albeit one who was assigned the difficult task of getting Trump positive press in the form of a winning New York Times article.
Hope always backed Trump’s point-of-view, according to Fire and Fury , with Hicks often landing firmly on Trump’s side when the president complained of the media being out to get him with negativity. Hicks even developed an instinct for the types of articles that would make Trump happy, with Hope presenting those clips to the president, even as others brought Trump bad news.
Wolff even likened Hope to the classic robotic wives seen in The Stepford Wives , calling Hicks “a kind of Stepford factotum, as absolutely dedicated to and tolerant of Mr. Trump as anyone who had ever worked for him.” According to the Dallas Observer , even crossing the line and allegedly calling Hicks a “ piece of tail ” hasn’t apparently dampened Hope’s enthusiasm in working for Trump, in Wolff’s estimation, with Hicks failing to get the coveted and positive New York Times coverage.
“That, in the president’s estimation, had yet failed to happen, ‘but Hope tries and tries,’ the president said. On more than one occasion, after a day—one of the countless days—of particularly bad notices, the president greeted her, affectionately, with ‘You must be the world’s worst PR person.’”
Hicks was also the person who greeted Trump each morning, “quaking” to tell him what the latest Morning Joe episode said about the president in the wake of Trump refusing to watch the show. Either way, Trump’s closeness with Hope was something that not only baffled White House insiders but caused concern and alarm.
Michael wrote that “the relationship of the president and Hope Hicks, long tolerated as a quaint bond between the older man and a trustworthy young woman, began to be seen as anomalous and alarming.” Existing as a go-between in the middle of President Trump and the media, Hope’s complete devotion to Trump and her accommodating nature to him was being blamed as part of the reason for Trump’s “unmediated behavior.”
“His impulses and thoughts—unedited, unreviewed, unchallenged—not only passed through him, but, via Hicks, traveled out into the world without any other White House arbitration. ‘The problem isn’t Twitter, it’s Hope,’ observed one communication staffer.”