Trump aides were ‘f–ked’ by Capitol riot, Hope Hicks wrote in text
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump’s White House adviser Hope Hicks fumed on Jan. 6, 2021, that the outgoing president’s aides were “all f–cked” and likely to be “perpetually unemployed” after a wild mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
“In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys chapter,” Hicks wrote in a text message to first daughter Ivanka Trump’s then-chief of staff Julie Radford, referring to the extremist group the Proud Boys that helped lead the riot.
“And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed,” Hicks vented. “I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.”
“Oh yes,” Radford answered. “I’ve been crying for an hour.”
The Democrat-led House select committee that investigated the 76-year-old Trump’s role in the violence released the text messages Monday, the last day before Republicans take control of the lower chamber of Congress.
The committee of seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans voted last month to ask the Justice Department to charge Trump with crimes including inciting an insurrection to prevent him from returning to power in the 2024 election.
Hicks, now 34, was one of Trump’s closest aides. She worked for the Trump Organization and followed him to the White House in 2017, holding titles including communications director. She returned to the West Wing in Trump’s final year to be a counselor to the president after working for roughly a year and a half as a Fox Corporation executive.
Hicks raged to Radford throughout the day on Jan. 6 as rioters sent Vice President Mike Pence and legislators fleeing to safety, disrupting certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.
“[T]his made us all unemployable,” she said at one point. “Like untouchable. God I’m so f—ing mad.”
“I know,” Radford answered. “Like there isn’t a chance of finding a job.”
“Nope. Not being dramatic, but we are all f–ked. Alyssa [Farah] looks like a genius,” Hicks went on, referring to Trump’s final de facto communications director, who quietly resigned before the riot — and later was selected to co-host “The View.”
After 7 p.m., Hicks wrote of Trump, “Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him.” The then-president had blasted Pence for lacking the “courage” to personally reject swing-state electors for Biden.
In a seeming reference to Ivanka Trump, who worked as an unpaid White House adviser, Hicks wrote on the night of Jan. 6, “I am so done. Does she get how royally fucked they all are now?”
The messages reflect the broad reaction from Trump aides to the violence at the Capitol that day.
Mick Mulvaney, who worked as Trump’s budget director and acting chief of staff, for example, publicly vented hours after the riot that “the folks who spent time away from our families, put our careers on the line to go work for Donald Trump — and we did have those successes to look back at … now it will always be, ‘Oh yeah, you work for the guy who tried to overtake the government.'”
Radford gave little information to Hicks about the first daughter and her husband, Trump’s right-hand man Jared Kushner, in the messages published by the committee.
On the morning of Jan. 6, before the violence began, Radford wrote, apparently about Ivanka, that “it finally hit her” that Trump would have to leave office after Democrats won a pair of runoff elections in Georgia days prior, flipping control of the Senate.
Sympathizing with Hicks’ concern about being employable in the future, Radford wrote, “I know, like there isn’t a chance of finding a job. Visa also sent me a blow off email today. Already.”
In response to Hicks asking if the then-first daughter was “appalled or indifferent,” Radford texted: “I was with them tonight for about 2 [hours.] It was interesting and Jared said something that makes me think they know.” She did not elaborate on what was said in the messages made public.
Radford also wrote that night that Ivanka “just called me about” model Karlie Kloss — who is married to Kushner’s brother Josh — writing on Twitter that she “tried” to convince the first family that it was “patriotic” to accept election results, without further description.
