CommentsTRUMP WATCH—I wasn’t going to comment on this, but the Rob Porter wife beating story is now going on its seventh day. And to the extent that this story has "legs," given the Hope Hicks angle, there are just too many available puns not to take this on. As reported on yahoo: https://tinyurl.com/y9rhjq4h (Photo above: Hope Hicks with the President.)
Let’s get the serious stuff out of the way first. There is a strong parallel between this scandal and the way Mike Flynn was handled. The FBI went to White House lawyer Don McGahn and told him that Flynn was compromised, but no move was made to oust him until it was forced to after the press published reports of his indiscretions. As reported in Slate.
In just the same way, McGahn was told long ago that Rob Porter had a history of spousal abuse, as was General Kelly, but it was not until a picture of a woman with a huge shiner hit the papers that they were forced to act. Kelly was still trying to defend Porter to save his job even after the evidence of the picture was out there. Hicks herself was writing official statements in support of her own boyfriend we learn.
This is all just further evidence that this is a White House without a moral center, as led by the example of Trump himself, who categorically denied equally damning evidence out of his own mouth of his sexual assaults. And we can fully expect that Trump himself will not get dumped and lose his job either until even more compelling evidence against him hits the papers, evidence of serious constitutional crimes, as it ultimately will, by the indicting hand of Robert Mueller.
Now, in very sincere defense of Hope Hicks, we'd like to say if she is strongly attracted romantically to men in positions of political power, and wants to sleep around the White House, more power to her. You go girl, political party girl or not. We have nothing but respect for empowered, sexually aggressive women who go for what they want. At least there isn't a judgmental or sexist bone in our bodies.
There is, however, a pattern. It was reported in the Michael Wolff book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, https://tinyurl.com/yc98y3mx that Hicks was sleeping with Corey Lewandowski, before he was himself relieved of duty. We are told she has been associated with Porter too since about November. It seems the #MeToo movement has hit the White House at last, though not in the way originally intended.
But . . . Porter is out of power as well. So unfortunately for true romance, we would predict you can pretty much kiss his relationship with Hicks goodbye also. He recently dumped some other transitory
girlfriend to take up with Hicks. Now we suspect he'll be the one to get dumped. Sad.
Wolff suggested in interviews about his book that Trump had been carrying on an affair himself, but did not have definitive enough evidence to name the woman. We never believed it was Nikki Haley.
Wolff was chastised on, and kicked off, Morning Joe by Mika for not shooting down that particular speculation out of hand, and for exploiting it to try to sell yet more of his number one best seller
books.
But our best first guess would have been Hicks as the latest secret Trump paramour, with Melania hardly being around at all. It would now seem Hicks was sleeping with just about everybody else around Trump. Post Lewandowski, and pre-Porter, that's a long dry spell for someone as active as Hicks, that's all we're saying.
"THERE IS NO REASON REASON GOOD CAN'T TRIUMPH OVER EVIL, IF ONLY ANGELS WILL GET ORGANIZED ALONG THE LINES OF THE MAFIA."
-Kurt Vonnegut
Absent that, in the mean time, you can help to clean up the White House by demonstrating where you stand.
(Michael N. Cohen is a former board member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, founding member of the LADWP Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee, founding member of LA Clean Sweep and a contributor to CityWatch.)
-cw
