Discussion: Internal Effort To Replace Hicks Has Caused Infighting, Backstabbing

One Trump ally said the president has previously said, only half-jokingly, that he should appear on the cover every week.

I’ll buy a copy of Time when he appears on the cover with a big, black “X” slashed across his mug.

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  1. Replacing Hicks did not cause backlighting and instabbing. They are SOP in the Trump admin, replacing Hicks is just the issue of the day on which they are focused.

  2. Trump’s most trusted aide is a 20 something PR professional who also has experience promoting Ivanka’s fashion line. Anyone see any problems with this?

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Least surprising headline of the week.

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Despite her title as communications director title, Hicks was more accurately described by White House officials as Trump’s right-hand-woman and media gatekeeper, providing needed doses of affirmation to the president and able to deliver bad news to him with few repercussions.

Hmm… why do we think she got by with giving him the bad news? It’s like a creepy, sexist version of the court jester. He was allowed to voice opinions that others would have been beheaded for, because he could couch it in comedy and fooling. She couched it in her looks.

Now let’s look at the contenders:

[The] leading candidates: Mercedes Schlapp, the White House strategic communications director, and Tony Sayegh, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Treasury Department.

Many close to the White House, however, expect senior adviser Kellyanne Conway or press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to assume the role, at least temporarily.

Which do YOU think will replace the woman in the center?

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I don’t think you can call Hope Hicks a “professional” in any endeavor. Just look at how professionally she handled the explanation for DJTJR’s meeting with the Russians at Trump Tower.

___________________________________ Has Caused Infighting, Backstabbing

There’s a macro for that.

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How do you distinguish the infighting and backstabbing caused by Hope’s departure from the background levels of infighting and backstabbing? That must be some pretty sophisticated statistical analysis.

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Trump likes to create panic and chaos. It brings him joy.

He hires people he can manipulate.

‘‘Only the best…’’

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I want the copy that has a picture of him being perp-walked into prison.

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The sun came up and it’s just another day at the White House. Ho hum.

On the other hand, when AP starts defaulting to “Republicans in Disarray” stories instead of explaining how this is good for John McCain, it’s a little bit of progress.

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PBS used to have this show “In Performance at the White House”, lots of these shows in the Obama era. They were excellent, and the president didn’t have to go to New York to catch a show. My question is this: What has happened in the Trump White House? Melania must like some kind of artists. Or is our president so far gone that he can’t honor culture and art? Or does he think the reality show he is producing in the White House substitutes for real art? The vacuum and the poshlost are downright eerie.

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The important bit of information here, not that it isn’t pretty widely known anyway, is that Hicks really wasn’t the communications director in any historical or practical sense of the title. There can be no communications director around Trump on that basis; at best the job is reactionary damage control. The White House has shown time and again that they are wholly unable to lay out and execute a strategic communications plan beyond a day (Its still Infrastructure Week, right??)

Hicks had the additional assignment of being the Presidential soother. That’s the important role that is going to go unfulfilled, to devastating impact. In fact, my guess is that Ivanka doesn’t even want that role, that’s why she brought Hicks into the inner circle in the first place. However, that IS the role that everyone is auditioning for, with the thinking being…if you are that close to Trump, you have his ear and therefore are the one pulling the strings. That thinking is very wrong, btw.

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That should be about page six, I think. Having gone through the Watergate shitshow in my mid-30’s, even Nixon’s two-handed Vee flashing as he boarded the helo for the last time was cause for jubilation that had the cats running to hide under the bed. And in his pitiful way tRump will give his stupid fucking thumbs up on his way out. I know which digits I’ll give him in return.

My keyboard would like a word with you - as soon as it towels off.

Yessiree. Come to TPM, and learn something(s) new everyday. “Poshlost” (is the Russian version of banality, with a characteristic national flavoring of metaphysics and high morality, and a peculiar conjunction of the sexual and the spiritual. This one word encompasses triviality, vulgarity, sexual promiscuity, and a lack of spirituality.) Perfect! And how ironic that it’s Russian. Thanks.

ETA: “Or is our president so far gone that he can’t honor culture and art?” It’s fairly obvious that he wouldn’t know from culture if it bit him in the ass.

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To go along with your “what ever happened to”

Did anyone else hear of a WH Science Fair for 2017? The above link goes into detail about the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the death of the office.

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I hope they find someone who is as good as Hope Hickey at steaming the Preshitident’s trousers.

Maybe that lying sack of shit racist John Kelly can find a male, female or transgender pornstar that is as pretty as Iwanka Trump and is Preshitident Manslut-Peehooker’s type for the job.

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@lastroth Interesting and depressing article. Have to confess that amidst all the rest of the sturm und drang I’ve not recognised this significant area of neglect in the mis-administration. A quick mental tally of ideas-associated-with-DJT finds “science and technology” languishing at around three hundred and fourteenth.

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