6 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE ‘ 7 She saw what the president saw: she knew what the president, a man she acted as his de facto chief of staff. Trump did not want his administra- unable to control his own running monologue, knew. tion to be staffed by professionals; he wanted it to be staffed by people who On February 27, 2018, testifying before the House Intelligence attended and catered to him. Committee—she had already appeared before the special counsel—she Hicks—"Hope-y,’ to Trump—was both the president's gatekeeper was pressed about whether she had ever lied for the president. Perhaps a and his comfort blanket. She was also a frequent subject of his pruri- more accomplished communications professional could have escaped the ent interest: Trump preferred business, even in the White House, to be corner here, but Hicks, who had scant experience other than working as personal. “Who's fucking Hope?” he would demand to know. The topic Donald Trump's spokesperson, which, as often as not, meant dealing with also interested his son Don Jr., who often professed his intention to “fuck his disregard of empirical truth, found herself as though in a sudden and Hope.” The president's daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, unexpected moral void trying to publicly parse the relative importance both White House senior advisers, expressed a gentler type of concern for of her boss's lies. She admitted to telling “white lies.” as in, somehow, less Hicks; sometimes they would even try to suggest eligible men. than the biggest lies. This was enough of a forward admission to require But Hicks, seeming to understand the insular nature of Trumpworld, a nearly twenty-minute mid-testimony conference with her lawyers, dis- dated exclusively inside the bubble, picking the baddest boys in it: cam- . tressed by what she might be admitting and by where any deconstruction paign manager Corey Lewandowski during the campaign and presiden- of the president's constant inversions might lead. tial a