The diary on the rec list about Hicks being groomed and the media obsession with her crocodile performative tears IMO is waaayyyy off the mark as MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell explains.
Lawrence starts as follows:
"Today's courtroom was a tale of two young women describing their work in government: one described her dedication to a difficult job done honorably under intense pressure with high stakes with the best of motivations in pursuit of an ideal, and the other was Hope Hicks."
TRANSCRIPT
Today's courtroom was a tale of two young women describing their work in government one described her dedication to a difficult job done honorably under intense pressure with high stakes with the best of motivations in pursuit of an ideal, and the other was Hope Hicks.
Hope Hicks was preceded on the witness stand today by a young woman who appeared to be about the same age as Hope Hicks was when she started working for presidential candidate Donald Trump. I wish I could tell you the young woman's name because it's a beautiful name that any parent or fiction writer would be proud to create, but I won't tell you her name because homicidal Trump supporters are all too eager to threaten the lives of all of us who they despise.
They especially like to do that on social media and this young woman's job in the district attorney's office is to study social media and prepare social media for use as evidence in criminal trials. That job became the worst job in the district attorney's office when, a year and a half ago, she was assigned to the investigation of Donald Trump and had to read as many as10,000 social media posts, mostly by Donald Trump but also by Michael Cohen and others involving this case.
Imagine having to keep up with, in real time, the poison Donald Trump spews on social media every day and having to reach back in time for Trump tweets that are relevant to this criminal investigation as far back as 2016 and beyond.
She has saved about 1,500 posts on Instagram, Twitter, truth social and other sites for the District Attorney's Trump evidence file. She testified that she has analyzed about 30 social media accounts in the process.
Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyers tried to object to her testimony that laid the groundwork for introducing social media posts by Donald Trump but her testimony was so technically flawless and so convincing to judge Juan Merchan…that the judge overruled every objection the Trump lawyers raised to try to block her testimony and block her introduction of the exhibits.
She won; she beat the Trump lawyers at the game of admitting evidence. She described the elaborate and exacting process she had to go through with each piece of social media to fit the complex requirements of introducing even a single tweet as an exhibit in court, and thanks to her painstaking adherence to those legal rules and requirements the jury was shown this tweet by Donald Trump.
"I've never said I'm a perfect person nor pretended to be someone that I'm not I've said and done things I regret and the words released today on this more than a decade old video are one of them anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong and I apologize."
October 8th 2016, that was the one and only time Donald Trump has ever apologized in his life. It was immediately after the Access Hollywood tape was released in October 2016 in the last weeks of Donald Trump's first presidential campaign.
The thousands of hours of work done by that young paralegal assistant in the DA's office to allow the introduction of exhibits like that paid off today. Her dedication and professionalism was obvious to everyone in the courtroom especially judge Merchan. She is the lowest paid person who has spoken in that courtroom. She will never be applauded. Never publicly thanked. She doesn't get to fly on private jets like Hope Hicks did when she started her campaign job, or on Air Force One like Hope Hicks did when she worked in the White House.
This Witness was one of the unsung heroes in the machinery of American justice. That's her job – justice. That is one of the motivators for putting in those long hours. That is the ideal, she gets to pursue in her work – justice. The DA's office does not pay her enough jobs like that never pay enough but she gets to take home more than a paycheck she gets to take home her pride. Pride, the thing Hope Hicks sold to Donald Trump.
At 11:23 a.m, an assistant district attorney said, "The people call Hope Hicks." Dressed in a black suit, she walked past the defense table within arm’s reach of Donald Trump without ever looking at him, and he did not look at her as she walked by.
She began her testimony with a bit of biography, saying she was a 2010 graduate of Southern Methodist University who then began working for the Trump organization in 2014. She told her first lie about 10 minutes into her testimony. Now some people will think lie is too harsh a word for what I'm about to read to you, but it does show what a casual Trumpian relationship with the truth Hope Hicks lives by.
She described Donald Trump under oath as quote "a very good multitasker and a very hard worker." He is not and never has been a hard worker. Everyone knows that isn't true, but most of the press corps on the campaign trail and in the White House who covered Hope Hicks easily accepted those lies. Lies of that size from Hope Hicks all the time without any of those lies diminishing their view of her in any way.
She was on that witness stand as she has always been, the picture of privilege. She laughed out loud in the courtroom at the very idea of Donald Trump offering her a job she was unqualified to do – press secretary for a presidential campaign. That is what privilege looks like. She had never been a press secretary for anything. She had no idea how to be a campaign presidential campaign press secretary.
Like everyone in the Trump campaign, no serious campaign would hire them to do anything. Hope Hicks lives on the Donald Trump side of our politics where people rant endlessly about attributing things like the failure of Boeing's manufacturing and maintenance of aircrafts to some kind of liberal oriented hiring program that gives jobs
There has never been a more unworthy candidate for Hope Hicks job in the presidential campaign or in the White House than Hope Hicks. She didn't need either one of those jobs. She was born rich in Connecticut. She could have tried to do something more worthy with her life, or at least do something that wasn't harmful. But she chose to help Donald Trump become president of the United States.
That's what she chose to do and that job came with a motto: "deny, deny, deny." That's what she wrote in an email when the Trump campaign team of incompetence was trying to respond to David Fahrenthold's brilliant reporting at the Washington Post which revealed the infamous Access Hollywood video in which Donald Trump is shown bragging about his favorite method of sexual assault.
David Fahrenthold rocked the Trump campaign on October 7th, 2016, when he sent an email to Hope Hicks asking for a comment about the Access Hollywood video, which he came into possession of before the Washington Post would publish it. David Fahrenthold included a transcript of the video in that email but not the video itself.
Question: did you read Mr. Trump the email you received from Mr. Fahrenthold?
Answer: I read him the email and I have a vague recollection of starting to read the transcript and then he finished reading it himself I believe.
Question: Did you hand him the email for him to read?
Answer: Yes, that's my recollection.
Question: And what, if anything, did he say?
Answer: He said that that didn't sound like something he would say and so on.
The basis of that lie told to Hope Hicks by Donald Trump "that that didn't sound like something he would say," Hope Hicks told the team that the strategy was deny, deny, deny. Meaning lie, lie, lie. Hope Hicks did a lot of that. Anyone who knows Donald Trump knows the Access Hollywood video does indeed sound like something he would say.
Hours later the video was out there and Hope Hicks could watch him say it herself, and so the jury heard Hope Hicks describe Donald Trump lying directly to her, quote, “He said that that didn't sound like something he would say.” That was a very harmful line of testimony about Donald Trump.
Juries are always wondering if this witness is telling the truth, would this person lie to us, and now they know that Donald Trump lied to Hope Hicks right there in that line about that video when that video came out, proving that Donald Trump said every word that was in that transcript.
That was enough for John McCain. Senator McCain turned against Donald Trump. Then that was enough for Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan who canceled a campaign event with Donald Trump. Republican Congressman Jason Chaitz came on this program that night for the one and only time in his life and retracted his endorsement of Donald Trump in the name of his daughters.
That very night Republicans were rushing away from Donald Trump because of what they heard him say and do on that Access Hollywood video, but not Hope Hicks. Not Hope Hicks. If you don't quit then, when do you quit, Hope Hicks? Answer was never.
Hope Hicks was there in Washington on the White House payroll on January 6th making no attempt at all to get Donald Trump to do the right thing during the attack on the capital. To stop that attack and what did she do after January 6th? Nothing. She eventually did an interview with the January 6 committee where she said as little as she possibly could and offered no significant help to the committee. Very little that they could even use in their public revelation of their evidence.
Compare that to Cassidy Hutchinson. They both took the same oath of office as White House employees to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. Hope Hicks who had direct access to Donald Trump whenever she wanted it didn't say a word to Donald Trump on January 6. Didn't even try to, while Cassidy Hutchinson, who did not have direct access to Donald Trump, was desperately trying to get her boss Mark Meadows, the white house chief of staff, to convince Donald Trump to stop the attack on the Capitol.
Cassidy Hutchinson became the January 6 committee's most important witness. Cassidy Hutchinson has been urging Americans not to vote for Donald Trump. Nothing like that from Hope Hicks. Nothing. I've never seen anyone in the White House treated the way the White House Press Corps treated Hope Hicks. Talk about privilege. There is video of White House reporters kissing her, social kissing, as they're greeting at White House press briefings. That doesn't happen unless you are Hope Hicks.
She cried. That's the big news of the day out of the courtroom. No one knows why she cried at the very beginning of cross-examination. I heard three different theories for the tears from reporters on the way out of the courtroom today and you'll hear some theories during this hour from people who are in the courtroom with me today and are more perceptive about that.
I don't know why she cried and I don't care. I know she didn't cry for the 628 children who were held at the southern border in custody by Donald Trump who was then unable to find their parents and reunite them. Hope Hicks didn't cry for them.
And we can be sure that Hope Hicks has never cried when her motto of deny, deny, deny, took hold in the Supreme Court, deciding to deny women a right they had for 50 years in this country. Longer than Hope has been alive.
I'm sure she didn't cry for that 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had to leave the state after being raped to receive abortion services in Indiana.
Hope Hicks kept working for Donald Trump to become the president of the United States after she knew that deny, deny, deny was a lie, a lie she told. Hope Hicks watched the Access Hollywood video and thought yes, yes that's who I want to keep working for tonight. That's who I want to be president of the United States and I'm going to continue to work as hard as I can to make that man on that video bragging about sexual assault become the next president of the United States.
That's my mission and that is who Hope Hicks wanted to be reelected as president of the United States after he recommended injecting bleach into your veins to cure covid. That's who Hope Hicks wanted to keep in the White House.
We had a monster in the presidency, not because of Donald Trump, but because of the people who voted for Donald Trump, and because of the people who worked for Donald Trump's campaign to get him there.
You get monsters like Donald Trump thanks to people like Hope Hicks. People who White House reporters social kiss in the White House Press briefing room. Reporters whose acceptance of Donald Trump is warmed by the charms of Hope Hicks.
Witness, Hope Hicks got off the witness stand today without being asked the most important question of her life. She wasn't asked that question because it wasn't an important question in this trial. And that question is…why didn't you quit? Why didn't you quit that presidential campaign in 2016 when it was so obvious to all of us that you were working for a pathological liar and a dangerous person? Why didn't she quit is a much more important question than why did she cry.
Ain't she sweet?
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