Hicks Fix

May 2, 2024, Hope Hicks, former Communications Director for former President Donald Trump, testifying in the first criminal trial of a former President. Screenshot by author. Photo courtesy of CBS News

Ms. Get-in-front-of-it meets Mr. Fixit.

Translation: Frustrated publicist (Hope Hicks) meets maladjusted lawyer (Michael Cohen) with errant client (Donald Trump).

Futures at risk, both are not doing well.

Michael Cohen didn’t want this. Neither did Hope Hicks. Despite their misgivings managing, yet being dangled like marionettes by their mutual client, Cohen and Hicks were employees of the Trump organization.

There they worked for their boss, twice previous aspiring candidate for President. There they would remain, save for Hicks, who was recruited as a kind of communications image bodyguard for the newly elected President. Cohen would stay behind working for the “Organization,” marooned in New York where the ‘fixing’ sans Donald was desultory, remote from the klieg lights of DC.

They come from different cultural backgrounds: she from Greenwich, Connecticut — wealthy, arriviste, white Republican suburban enclave; he from ‘five towns’ suburban Long Island— less arriviste than xenophobic, wealthy, Republican, Nassau County.

Both wanted to ascend. For both, Trump was their ticket.

For Trump, there were differences. Hicks’ daddy was a generous Republican donor. Cohen, a lawyer, had experience fixing things, didn’t shy from offering physical threats, owned a fleet of cabs, operated under the radar. (1)

She, the canary, smelled trouble and dazzled for the cameras by Trump’s side. He acknowledged a shadowy existence, eluding photographers until the end, when his phone stopped ringing. Public relations fixing was Hicks’ stock in trade. Fixing of another kind was Cohen’s: Cohen liked to think he “did deals.”

In the end Hicks surrendered behind Daddy’s K Street lawyers; Cohen went to jail.

Now they are both “out.”

The last time the klieg lights went on for Hicks was when she was advised to plea the fifth 155 times before the J6 Committee. It didn’t matter: she hadn’t committed any crimes. “Truthful but not forthcoming” (2) were her rehearsed answers. For Cohen, it was the moment he offered up to AOC’s questioning before the House Judiciary Committee, ‘yeah, I fixed stuff for Trump which I was asked to coverup and lie about.’ Lie he did, to Federal investigators, which earned him jail time.

Now they are in a courtroom with the eyes of the world on their court sketch artist facsimiles, squirming before a criminal trial jury. They arrive in black, window-tinted SUV’s, enter side doors to elude the paparazzi.

On Thursday, Hicks arrived to testify in lower Manhattan, entered the courtroom through a side door, was sworn in, sat down on the witness chair, and, as if on cue, promptly burst into tears. She asked for time to compose herself. For a publicist, Hicks saw the glamorous side of her life on trial, but she had one last opportunity — to protect herself yet come across as self-less.

She couldn’t… She was “under oath.”

We haven’t seen Cohen on the witness stand… yet. Not allowed to play with legal marbles, Cohen must approach ‘plausible credibility.’ Crying won’t help Cohen. His, the tougher task, is to not come off to the jury as angry. Odds are against this credibility. He is not only under oath, but also under jury scrutiny. He is, for the prosecution, a walking legal evidentiary time bomb.

From this duo, America is supposed to make sense of Trump’s innocence.

Trump arrives daily, carrying a clutch of favorable press clippings, like Linus and his blanket. He dozes. He scowls. He complains about the courtroom HVAC. He stares into a monitor image of the witness, listening to the questioning, scheming about what grievance thread to pull in front of the press during lunchtime break, before cameras and on Truth Social, testing the Judge with another gag order fine.

He is not campaigning, which is Trump’s perverse version of campaigning.

When Hicks “ran to the 25th floor” of Trump Tower to break the news that the Wall Street Journal had exposed the Access Hollywood tape, Trump and coven were preparing for the second “Presidential debate.” The first hadn’t gone well. Chris Christie was sweating to keep Trump engaged, watching the ‘future of his party’s leader’ obsessively direct the cameras to his “good side.”

According to Hicks, Trump was stunned. To the debate prep crowd, consider theirs was a reactive mixture of ‘so whats’ and ‘now this’: dismissal and outrage.

Interpretation be damned.

According to Hicks, Cohen the fixer was miffed that he wasn’t going to DC, which Cohen couldn’t understand. Once in DC, Trump wouldn’t need fixing. He had Hope, and Don (McGahn), and other assembled elves, who could now fly on the wings of executive privilege.

They had the White House, dammit.

May 5

Notes

1- “Michael Cohen’s Troubled Taxi Business,” May 13, 2018, npr.org

2- Melissa Murray, May 4, 2024, MSNBC