Hope Hicks Might Be Human

President The Donald “I like the mandate”[1] Trump’s current Communications Director, Hope Hicks, has announced that she’s quitting and that she plans to leave her job within the next few weeks.

Erin Burnett of CNN reported that “one of the President’s close allies” told her that Hicks’ resignation was sudden. The President berated Hicks over her testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, the source said, and he asked Hicks how she “could be so stupid.” (In that testimony, Hicks had admitted to casually lying for the President, but never about Russia.) Burnett speculated that the berating was “apparently the last straw for Hope Hicks.”

Hicks’ resignation was first reported by Maggie Haberman in the New York Times, though, and that first account was a little different:

Those two accounts can both be true, or true enough. If Hicks had taken only a few people into her confidence, the rest would have been surprised by her announcement, and they wouldn’t have needed to search beyond Trump’s most recent abuse for an explanation.

A third account is circulating: Hicks’ appearance before the House Intelligence Committee spooked her, sobered her, or otherwise made it clear to her that it was time to get off the doomed crazy train. Allahpundit summarizes this point of view pretty well:

AP is too dismissive about Hicks’ precarious proximity to America’s potentate’s problems, so here’s a link to someone who errs in the other direction. Also, I’m skeptical about Haberman’s insistence that the timing of Hicks’ resignation is purely coincidental. Those of us who have walked out of a bad job or a bad relationship know that things that have been “a long time coming” actually arrive pretty suddenly. An “enough is enough” or “that’s it” moment arrives, and suddenly months or years of long-suffering are over. And the related spin, that “there was no good time” for Hicks to resign, seems silly. There might have been no good time, but any time would have been better than the one she chose. Hicks is the White House Communications Director and knows exactly how bad the timing of her resignation looks. Were she really leaving at her leisure, surely she would have waited, be it for a week or for a month. Having said all that, I recognize that it’s possible that Hicks may have chosen her date to quit even before she was scheduled to testify—but no one has reported that.

There is a fourth account. Hicks was fired. She had been on thin ice since the Rob Porter scandal, they say, and her House Intelligence Committee testimony just was too much. I can’t give this account any time or weight because I haven’t read anything that would let me believe Donald Trump would ever fire Hope Hicks.

So, what really happened?

I would guess that she was running low on gas, was thinking of quitting, ran out of gas, and quit. I know that conclusion is startling. With respect to the bad timing, I would guess that she just didn’t care anymore. Anyone who has ever run out of gas knows that feeling. Let’s call it the “completely out-of-gas shrug.”

But this is Sketchbook, and we set a different standard. I can't just lay a startling conclusion on the table and walk away. Readers are used to a certain rigor, and I owe them more analysis of the available evidence. So, here follows more analysis of the available evidence.[2]

Hope Hicks, walking down stairs.

Hope Hicks, walking up stairs.

Hope Hicks, looking a little to the right.

Hope Hicks, looking a little to the left.

Just damn.

Eh, let’s wait for the book.