Jen Psaki recalls shock at Hope Hicks’ ‘big question’ after Trump won in 2016

MSNBC’s Jen Psaki recalled Sunday being struck by the main thing Hope Hicks wanted to know when she toured the White House with then-President-elect Donald Trump after his 2016 victory.

Former Trump spokesman Hicks sat down with Obama-era White House communications director Psaki to discuss the mechanics of the president’s media team.

“And of all the questions she could have asked us, and even though it was two days after a pretty shocking election result, she had one major question,” Psaki recalled on “Inside with Jen Psaki.” Hicks asked her: “How do you get the president to approve every statement that comes out in his name?”

Psaki explained to Hicks that “if we need a statement to commemorate, for example, National Pancake Day, the president doesn’t need to approve it. Obviously, if it’s a more significant statement, he does that and he works with us on that.”

Hicks’ response “was interesting,” Psaki said. She reportedly said Trump “will want to approve everything.” “It made me realize that when it comes to public relations, his boss is the very definition of a micromanager,” Psaki said.

“Fast forward to Friday and that’s exactly how Hope Hicks portrayed Trump” in her testimony at the presumptive GOP nominee’s silence trial when, Psaki said, Hicks essentially described him as “obsessed and controlling when it came to his media coverage” and said he was “very involved” in her 2016 campaign.

The bottom line, Psaki said, is that Trump was “intimately involved in the details of his 2016 campaign” and that “if he knew about the little things, how could he not know about the big things” like payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair.

Watch Psaki’s comment here:

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