Hope Hicks, President Donald Trump’s trusted White House aide tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday. Hicks holds a key position in White House and has access to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. The former fashion model has been in the Trump nexus since joining the Trump organisation in 2014.
Hicks showed signs of coronavirus when she accompanied US President Donald Trump to Minnesota for a campaign speech on Wednesday and tested positive for the disease, later in the day.
With hours of Hick’s positive diagnosis for COVID-19, US President Donald Trump also announced via Twitter that he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for coronavirus.
Hicks who serves a counsellor to President Trump is a public relation specialist. Hicks guides Trump’s daily schedule, devises campaign rhetoric and messaging and also looks over the newest controversies. Hicks also personally handwrites talking points for Trump ahead of his meetings.
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Her skill, according to a number of accounts, is channelling Trump’s own thinking into messaging and, for media consumption, letting “Trump be Trump.”
Like Ivanka Trump, the long-haired brunette is always seen in fashionable clothes and high heels, embellishing the feminine glamour that Trump likes to surround himself with.
She began working in Trump’s eponymous real estate company in 2014 first as an assistant to Ivanka but within a short time for the tycoon himself.
Hicks became communications manager for his 2016 election campaign, and after he triumphed was made White House director of strategic communications. She stayed out of the limelight, never speaking officially or giving interviews, and mostly remained unstained by the numerous controversies and investigations around Trump’s administration.
Hicks did testify to Justice Department and Congressional investigations into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia but mostly declined to answer and adhered to the White House line.
She was also alleged to have knowledge of Trump’s pre-election hush payments to two women who claimed to have had affairs with him but was not charged with any wrongdoing.
In February 2018, Hicks did stumble into her own controversy when the man she was dating, White House staff secretary Rob Porter, was forced to resign over domestic abuse accusations from his two former wives.
Hicks resigned and fled from the limelight to a California job as chief communications officer of the news and sports unit of the Fox media group.
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Earlier this year, after Trump had lost a number of top administration officials and faced an uphill reelection battle, she returned to his side as a counsellor and senior advisor, officially working under Kushner.
A recent Vanity Fair article said that she was behind Trump’s strategy for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic by holding daily freewheeling press conferences, letting “Trump be Trump,” which was seen as the secret to his 2016 upset election victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
