Hope Hicks, a former key ally of Donald Trump, texted another White House aide “we all look like domestic terrorists now” as the then president’s supporters overran the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
The fear was expressed in a message sent by Trump’s former communications director to Julie Radford, chief of staff to his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, on the afternoon of the deadly Capitol riot.
It is part of revelatory exchange between the pair released as supporting evidence by the January 6 House committee that investigated Trump’s efforts to remain in office following his defeat by Joe Biden.
The panel published its final report last month accusing the single-term president of a “multi-part conspiracy” to thwart the will of the people and subvert democracy.
According to reporting on Monday by the Hill, Hicks and Radford engaged in an increasingly resigned conversation as the Trump-incited mob overwhelmed security and invaded the Capitol, while Trump himself chose to watch on television and ignore pleas from aides, including Hicks, to call an end to the violence.
“In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys chapter,” Hicks texted to Radford, in an apparent reference to Trump and the violent rightwing group the Proud Boys.
“Yup,” Radford replied.
In a further message, Hicks wrote: “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed,” adding that “I’m so mad and upset.”
“We all look like domestic terrorists now,” she wrote.
“Oh yes I’ve been crying for an hour,” Radford responded.
The exchange went on to discuss Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump’s director of strategic communications who resigned several weeks before the riot after the November 2020 election. Griffin, now a political commentator for CNN and co-host of ABC’s The View, later told reporters she stood down because she “saw where this was heading”.
Hicks wrote to Radford: “Not being dramatic, but we are all fucked. Alyssa looks like a genius.”
Radford was less complimentary about Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary who became chief of staff to then first lady Melania Trump before resigning abruptly on the day of the riot.
Grisham’s resignation was “self-serving”, Radford opined, according to the Hill.
