Hope Hicks wanted to leave the White House twice before - but she couldn't find a time when there wasn't a crisis
- Hope Hicks considered leaving the White House twice previously, New York magazine reported Sunday.
- The second time, she couldn't bring herself to re-sign her apartment's annual lease.
- She considered resigning as early as last August, preferring to avoid the appearance of leaving amid a scandal - but realized that wasn't possible in President Donald Trump's White House.
Outgoing White House communications director Hope Hicks reportedly had come close to quitting twice before. By the second time, she couldn't bring herself to re-sign the lease for her Washington, DC, apartment.
Those details were reported in a New York magazine profile of Hicks, who announced her departure from the White House late last month, on Sunday. Hicks' announced her exit after she provided an interview to the House Intelligence Committee and the abuse scandal surrounding former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, whom Hicks was once dating.
Hicks, one of President Donald Trump's longest-serving aides, has been at the president's side since the early days of his presidential campaign in 2015.
New York's Olivia Nuzzi wrote that the first time Hicks came close to quitting was over dinner at the president's Bedminster golf club last August. She told White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and assistant to the president Ivanka Trump - both in the president's immediate family - that she was unhappy in her job.
The report said Hicks preferred to avoid the appearance of leaving her job amid a controversy in the White House - but in Trump's White House, there was always a crisis.
And the White House was not much different from the campaign, which was what she had reportedly hoped for, and she proposed the idea of working elsewhere in the administration, away from the Oval Office.
But the president's son-in-law and daughter cautioned her against leaving, asking her to instead give new chief of staff John Kelly a chance to improve the West Wing.
Then, in early December, Hicks contemplated leaving again. This time, it was when her apartment's annual lease was up for renewal. She reportedly "couldn't bring herself to sign the papers," as Nuzzi wrote, instead signing a six-month lease at cost inflation.