Hope Hicks is Gone, and It’s Not Clear Who Can Replace Her

WASHINGTON — Hope Hicks, the White House communications director who worked behind the scenes to direct the president through multiple professional crises — and decided to resign after she found herself exhausted by them — has left the building.

Those left behind are wondering what happens now.

Thursday was the last day at the White House for Hicks, a 29-year-old from Connecticut, whose unlikely career trajectory from corporate public relations hand to White House communications director kept pace with President Donald Trump’s own unorthodox rise to the Oval Office. Over 3 1/2 years, from the early trenches of the presidential campaign to desks in earshot of each other in the West Wing, Hicks had become Trump’s most trusted aide — and, perhaps most important, his unofficial translator to the rest of the staff.

“Her ability to anticipate what he wants and also execute can’t be replicated,” said Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman. “At least not immediately.”

Hicks never gave a single on-camera interview during her time in the White House. Unlike her boss, attention from the news media was never something she sought.

But by the time Hicks announced in February that she would leave her post, she had unwillingly moved from her preferred behind-the-scenes role into the center of a White House scandal over security clearances. It was kick-started by reports that Rob Porter, the former White House staff secretary whom she had been dating, had abused two former wives. In days, Hicks’ image was splashed across tabloids, cable news and gossip websites.

“It’s enough to make lesser people wilt,” Gidley said of the news media exposure focused on Hicks. “I made a joke that Britney Spears shaved her head and slapped a car with an umbrella over similar treatment from the paparazzi.”

Hicks’ proximity to the president has also been a matter of interest to those investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian officials.

Investigators have sought to determine what she knew about the president’s decision to fire the FBI director, James B. Comey. And in January, a former spokesman for Trump’s legal team had planned to tell investigators that Hicks had once said emails written by Donald Trump Jr. before a Trump Tower meeting — in which the younger Trump said he was eager to receive political dirt about Hillary Clinton from the Russians — would “never get out,” a claim her lawyer has forcefully denied.

Testifying in a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee weeks after Porter resigned from the White House, Hicks said that her job sometimes required her to tell “white lies” on behalf of the president.

Hours later, she announced she would leave the White House. Hicks, who avoids interviews with the news media, issued a statement saying she had “no words” to express her gratitude to the president. She had told her family and a few friends three days before that she planned to leave.

It had become clear to others that by the end of her tenure Hicks was exhausted by West Wing infighting and the daily grind of spending most of her waking hours on call to the president. It was a grueling lifestyle. After waking up and often sending her first emails of the day around 4:30 a.m., Hicks would squeeze in a workout. Then, for much of the work day, she could usually be found in her closet-size office within earshot of the president, where she would wait for his inevitable call: “Hopester,” Trump would say, or “Hopey!” The president sought her advice on any number of unfolding crises facing the White House, but also to check his instincts against hers.

She never cultivated a life outside the White House.

Several current and former aides praised Hicks' political instincts and understanding of Trump’s messaging. She often drafted his public statements, adopting his tendency to speak in simple declaratives peppered with Trumpian favorites — “incredible,” “unmatched.”

From time to time, she advised him on whether an angry Twitter post he wanted to send would be in his best political interests. From time to time, according to a former White House official, she would tell him that it was.

Little is known about the degree to which Hicks was a mediating force in an atypically run White House with a president whose first impulse is often his final reaction.

While messaging on the tax overhaul was tightly controlled by a team overseen by Hicks, Trump has in recent weeks appeared to have little regard for any formal rollout of his administration’s policy goals. Instead, he has proposed the death penalty for drug dealers, entered into haphazard diplomacy talks with North Korea, and gone back and forth on his views on tariffs. And on Thursday, in an appearance in Ohio that was supposed to be about infrastructure, he seemed to stall a trade deal that had already been negotiated with South Korea.

There is a palpable worry among those in the West Wing about who the president will now confide in — and how many other people might be able to occasionally pull him back — now that Hicks is gone.

She is also among the people the staff relied on to bolster flagging morale — one White House official described her departure as a mother leaving her children behind. To cut the tension in a chaotic workplace, Hicks baked cookies for aides on Valentine’s Day, swapped country music song recommendations and texted her colleagues funny video clips.

Another person who has had conversations with both the president and Hicks in recent weeks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to divulge private conversations, said that Trump relied on her and trusted her implicitly, mainly because she had never shown a willingness to put her own agenda ahead of his. She had also gained the trust of others in the Trump family for her loyalty.

“Hope is exceptional in every way and is loved by all who know her,” Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser, said in a statement. “She is brilliant, dedicated and compassionate — a unique talent.” The president’s chief of staff, John F. Kelly, has told several people he might leave the communications director role open for a time. But Tony Sayegh, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, is said to be up for consideration for the job, along with Mercedes Schlapp, the director of strategic communications.

Hicks, true to form, declined multiple requests to comment for this article. She has been coy with people who ask about where she will work next, or her plans for a vacation after a nonstop grind over three years, though she has told friends she is ready for a break. On her last day at the White House, Hicks had already sent 50 handwritten notes to senior staff and other people. In one of her last public appearances as an aide to the president, Hicks stood next to Trump as he emerged from the Oval Office and stood in front of news cameras for the first time in nearly a week.

He gave Hicks a kiss on the cheek, then set across the lawn, where Marine One was waiting. Two other White House aides, Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser, and Ivanka Trump, who was Hicks’ entree into the Trump orbit years ago, traveled with him to Ohio and then on to Florida.