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President Donald Trump and Hope Hicks
- White House communications director Hope Hicks's departure from the administration is a major blow to the president, who has relied heavily on Hicks for the past three years.
- White House officials say Hicks's exit will further destabilize the scandal-plagued West Wing and that Trump will miss her personally.
- "You can find another communications director. I think for Trump this is closer to losing a limb," a friend of Hicks's told Politico.
White House communications director Hope Hicks's departure from the administration is a major blow to the president, who has relied heavily on Hicks as one of his most loyal aides for the past three years.
Hicks, 29, was one of the first to join President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, and has remained perpetually by his side ever since, acting as one of his most trusted confidantes and aides. Alternately called Trump's surrogate daughter and the "Trump whisperer," Hicks is regarded by many as irreplaceable in the West Wing.
"She was not just a staffer for him," a friend of Hicks's told Politico. "You can find another communications director. I think for Trump this is closer to losing a limb."
Those who know Hicks say she understands Trump better than anyone outside of his family and that she's one of the few White House staffers the president genuinely trusts. Some say her absence from the scandal-plagued West Wing will destabilize it further.
"I cannot over-state how important Hope is to keeping this thing together," one White House official told Time. "She really is one of the only people who has the President's trust and respect."
And Trump's trust was reportedly not misplaced. A White House official told Axios's Jonathan Swan on Wednesday that Hicks is "one of the very few people here that you could say without fail had the best interests of the president at heart."
"She was a true believer, not an ideologue, but a true believer in Donald Trump," the official said.