Tag: Hope Hicks

DFL Party Slams Congressman Hagedorn, Stauber, and Emmer for Flying Soon After COVID-19 Exposure

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Today, the DFL Party sharply criticized Republican Congressman Jim Hagedorn, Tom Emmer, and Pete Stauber for flying just two days after being exposed to COVID-19. 

“By flying so soon after being exposed to COVID-19, Congressmen Emmer, Hagedorn, and Stauber deliberately put the health and safety of their fellow passengers at serious risk,” said DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin. “As these Congressman know, medical experts have said that a negative test soon after exposure is nearly meaningless.”

“Millions of Americans have sacrificed so much to slow the spread of COVID-19, yet Congressmen Emmer, Stauber, and Hagedorn could not even wait a few days to board an airplane,” added Martin. “These Congressmen’s stupidity and disregard for the well-being of their fellow passengers is staggering.”

Continue reading “DFL Party Slams Congressman Hagedorn, Stauber, and Emmer for Flying Soon After COVID-19 Exposure”

Ivanka Trump ‘urged’ president’s church photo-op — which could become a ‘defining moment’ of his time in office: NYT

AlterNet logoFirst daughter and senior White House advisor Ivanka Trump “urged” her father to take part in a controversial photo-op with a Bible according to a new report from The New York Times.

“After a weekend of protests that led all the way to his own front yard and forced him to briefly retreat to a bunker beneath the White House, President Trump arrived in the Oval Office on Monday agitated over the television images, annoyed that anyone would think he was hiding and eager for action,” the newspaper reported.

“He wanted to send the military into American cities, an idea that provoked a heated, voices-raised fight among his advisers. But by the end of the day, urged on by his daughter Ivanka Trump, he came up with a more personal way of demonstrating toughness — he would march across Lafayette Square to a church damaged by fire the night before,” the newspaper reported.

Hope Hicks was reportedly the brains behind the photo-op. Continue reading.

Hope Hicks Is Apparently Behind Trump’s Rambling, Egotistical Press Conferences

NOTE: This article is provided free by Vanity Fair.

The “let Trump be Trump” strategy is flaming out, with the president’s poll numbers dropping amid criticism of his daily grievance fests.

As the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. skyrockets, and the economy plummets, Donald Trump has continued to use the White House’s daily coronavirus press briefings to boast about how well he believes he’s handling the crisis, and take pot shots at his enemies. This “let Trump be Trump” strategy—the administration’s go-to, considering Trump has fired anyone who might preempt it—was applied to the pandemic just as one of the president’s most trusted aides officially returned to the fold. While Hope Hicks now holds a nebulous White House title, the communications strategy she has crafted for Trump’s emergency messaging is perfectly clear: let him address the nation in his own words while taking the briefing room’s centerstage on a near daily basis.

At first, this proved to be effective. Despite the president’s personal role in downplaying the dangers of the coronavirus, and the White House’s severely delayed mitigation efforts, Trump saw a sizable favorability boost in March. Forty-nine percent of Americans voiced their approval of his leadership at the time, which marked just the second time his presidency has enjoyed such ratings in Gallup’s national survey. But as the pandemic and its economic devastation have dragged on, the president has also used his position to brag about the ratings of his pressers beating out ABC’s The Bachelor and riff about his past sexual encounters with “models.” His approval bump has proved to be temporary, as an April 14 Gallup poll found a six-point drop. Continue reading “Hope Hicks Is Apparently Behind Trump’s Rambling, Egotistical Press Conferences”

Hope Hicks to return to White House

The Hill logoHope Hicks is returning to the White House as a counselor to President Trump and senior adviser.

Trump’s former communications director will work as a senior adviser for Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner‘s office, the White House confirmed Thursday. 

Hicks is likely to return to the White House sometime in early March, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said, though she noted that “details are still being determined.”  Continue reading.

Hope Hicks confirms Trump was serious about accepting foreign election interference in 2020

“I don’t think that was a joke based on what I saw.”

When former White House communications director Hope Hicks spoke to the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, she didn’t answer many questions. In fact, USA Today counted 155 questions that she refused to answer. But she did address a few questions about President Donald Trump, including whether he would accept dirt on his election opponents from foreign adversaries in 2020, as he claimed in a recent interview.

Yes, Hicks confirmed, Trump was serious about that.

Committee lawyer Norman Eisen first asked Hicks about Trump’s public statement during the 2016 campaign asking Russia to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to deleted messages on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Hicks said that based on her conversations with Trump immediately afterward, she believed the remark had been “a little bit tongue-in-cheek” and not “intended as an instructive or a directive to a foreign government.”

View the complete June 21 article by Zack Ford on the ThinkProgress website here.

Nadler: Hope Hicks testimony is huge gift in legal battle with Trump

House Democrats are planning to file a lawsuit within days to force former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify on Capitol Hill — and they say Hope Hicks’ reluctant testimony Wednesday will help deliver them a crucial win in court.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said Hicks’ blanket refusal to tell lawmakers about her tenure in the West Wing is the real-life illustration Democrats needed to show a judge just how extreme the White House’s blockade on witness testimony has become.

“It very much played into our hands,” Nadler said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office Thursday. “It’s one thing to tell a judge blanket immunity is not a right thing. It’s another thing when a judge can see what that means in actuality, and how absurd it is.”

View the complete June 21 article by Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney on the Politico website here.

Hope Hicks refused to answer 155 questions during House testimony

Hope Hicks refused to answer 155 questions from House Democrats on Wednesday about her tenure as communications director in the Trump White House, according to a transcript of her closed-door testimony released Thursday.

The longtime confidante of President Donald Trump spent nearly eight hours clinging closely to White House attorneys’ demands that she refuse to answer every question about her time in the White House, as Democrats ticked through a lengthy, detailed and at times monotonous recitation of questions they knew the answer to: “Objection.”

The House Judiciary Committee’s interview yielded virtually no new information about Hicks’ role in the Trump campaign, and none at all about her testimony to former special counsel Robert Mueller centering on Trump’s repeated attempts to constrain or thwart Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

View the complete June 20 article by Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney on the Politico website here.

Hicks repeatedly blocked by White House from answering Judiciary questions

The Hill logoThe House Judiciary Committee has released a transcript of a closed-door interview with former Trump aide Hope Hicks, showing White House lawyers repeatedly blocking her from answering questions about her work in the administration.

Hicks interviewed privately with the panel for nearly eight hours on Wednesday as part of its sweeping investigation into President Trumpand his associates. She was compelled to testify under subpoena.

The transcript, which stretches 273 pages long, shows Trump administration lawyers repeatedly blocking Hicks from answering questions about her time in the White House by invoking the argument she is immune from compelled congressional testimony on the subject — a tactic that infuriated Democratic lawmakerson Wednesday.

View the complete June 20 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

House Dems slam Hope Hicks and her White House lawyer for refusing to answer questions: ‘Ridiculous!’

AlterNet logoDemocratic lawmakers are already calling Hope Hicks’ congressional testimony “ridiculous.”

The former White House communications director complied with a subpoena Wednesday morning to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, but refused to answer any questions about her time serving under President Donald Trump.

A White House lawyer who accompanied Hicks, who left the government in early 2018, repeatedly objected to questions from congressional investigators.

Kyle Cheney

✔@kyledcheney

Replying to @kyledcheney

“It’s pretty ridiculous,” says Rep. @KarenBassTweets, saying the White House lawyer inside the Hope Hicks interview is objecting to lots of questions.

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View the complete June 19 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Hope Hicks agrees to testify to House Judiciary Committee

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on June 19, the committee announced Wednesday.

Why it matters: Hicks will be the first former Trump official to appear before a Democratic committee investigating whether the president attempted to obstruct justice. However, Hicks may decline to answer certain questions if the president asserts executive privilege over events relating to her time in the White House.

  • Last week, the president instructed Hicks not to turn over documents related to her time in the administration, in defiance of a subpoena from the committee.

Details: The “transcribed interview” will “include questions related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and efforts by President Trump, his associates, and other Administration officials to obstruct justice and investigations into Presidential misconduct,” per the statement.

View the complete June 12 article by Alayna Treene on the Axios website here.