Trump loyalist Hope Hicks will serve as the White House’s interim communications director, an unnamed White House official confirmed Wednesday.
The Daily Caller first reported the news just past midnight Wednesday morning.
“Hope Hicks will work with White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and all of the communications team and serve as the Interim White House Communications Director,” the unnamed official said in a statement to reporters. “We will make an announcement on a permanent communications director at the appropriate time.”
Hicks, 28, was a political novice prior to the start of Trump’s campaign for president, where she served as a top communications staffer, often referred to as communications director or press secretary. In the White House, she has served as director of strategic communications.
Before politics, Hicks was a model and worked as a PR staffer for Ivanka Trump, and eventually for Donald Trump.
Though she kept a low profile during the 2016 campaign, and in the months since, she’s also outlasted most of her former colleagues, including former communications directors Mike Dubke, Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci.
Hicks is known as an extremely close aide to Trump, even taking dictations of his tweets at times. She was the only other person in attendance when Trump told two New York Times reporters in an Oval Office interview that he would consider it crossing a red line if special counsel Robert Mueller dug into his or his family’s businesses.
Regardless of her experience or the duration of her temporary tenure, Hicks is in for a challenge: On Tuesday, Trump equated white supremacist-led protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend to the counter-protesters who had gathered to oppose them. Asked to compare the two sides during a raucous press conference, Trump said: “I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane.”
Correction: This post initially said Hicks had reportedly been named interim communications director on Thursday. The Daily Caller’s report was published early Wednesday morning.
This post has been updated.
