No Hope at the White House

Resignation speeches are always wonderful to hear when anything but the real reason is given. Hope Hicks, the incredibly young director of communications at the White House and a long-time devotee of Donald Trump, explained that she had decided to leave her job because she thought she had accomplished everything she could in her role and that there was never a perfect moment to resign. That statement comes right off the dusty shelf of readymade resignation explanations. It's almost as common as the one that says he or she wants to spend more time with his or her family. Hope Hicks couldn't use that one because she is only 29. You have to be at least 50 to come up with that one. So she went for the "I've done everything I came here to do" resignation cliche. General John Kelly thought she was the smartest 29-year-old around in the White House. It sounds like he will miss her. Almost as much as he misses his former close aide, Rob Porter who turned out, allegedly, to be a one-time wife-beater. He resigned last month. Kelly was very sad to see him go. So, too, was Hope Hicks, who is "romantically linked" to him. So, no more, "see you in the office, darling." Except that now Hope has also resigned, the two of them can plot their future together without the encumbrance of having Trump breathing down their necks. Hope Hicks was Trump's fourth communications director in 14 months which is some going. By all accounts she was terrific at standing up for Trump but not particularly forthcoming when communicating to the press. Indeed, she was known as a bit of an enigma, keeping to herself and speaking to the media as infrequently as possible. Mind you, that's what the Washington papers said. The truth is probably that she had selected reporters she spoke to off the record in secret phone calls. I have no proof of that but after working as a foreign correspondent in Washington for three years I do know how the White House crew works under all administrations. They are the worst leakers of the lot, sometimes giving away genuine classified information to some favoured reporters. Just jealousy on my part, of course. Being a "foreign" journalist no one in the White House whispered secrets to me and I never expected it, but was always flabbergasted when the New York Times or Washington Post splashed a story that patently broke every official secrets system in the book, such as the NYT story about how the US and Israel had planted a virus called Stuxnet into Iran's nuclear programme. Terrific story but what a betrayal of a secret intelligence scoop. So farewell Hope Hicks, may your future be bright. As for the White House, it is now officially Hopeless.