When a bombshell tax story was set to hit former President Donald Trump hard — Hope Hicks didn’t flinch.
That’s because the piece and pretty much any of the incoming that would appear to be a crisis for most presidents — was kid’s stuff compared to the “Access Hollywood” tape.
Former Donald Trump communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin recalled the nonchalance she received when she presented to Hicks a damning 2020 New York Times story that was about to publish.
“I remember being on Air Force One with Hope Hicks and mid-2020 in a story that I thought was shocking is about Trump’s taxes,” she said.
The Times had submitted 30 questions from the outlet that she wanted to respond to.
“I went and said, ‘We’ve got to get this to the president! This is a huge story!’ and she’s like ‘This is nothing. You don’t know. You haven’t seen anything! You weren’t there in 2016 — we survived ‘Access Hollywood.'”
Back in September 2020 The Times published a story relying on Trump’s tax information that tracked back more than 20 years and exposed his properties struggling financially, write-offs, audits, and debts, as well as the fact that he paid $750 in taxes the same year he became the 45th president.
And when it was clear that a major story was about to take aim at Trump’s presidency, Griffin, who said she joined the White House in 2017 to initially work with Vice President Mike Pence, nothing came close to the fallout they dealt with in the “Access Hollywood” scandal.
The now-infamous hot-mic of Trump and then “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush from 2005, had Trump bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump told Bush, to laughs.
The incident forced Trump and his campaign to offer a rare apology and dismiss the claim as “locker-room banter.”
“I apologize if anyone was offended,” he said at the time.
And it worked.
The damage didn’t force Trump to bow out. The campaign and Trump pressed on to win the election.
For Griffin, she realized that Trump inner circle believed that they survived that scandal and therefore nothing else could compare.
“That is the mindset, that was their barometer,” she said. “And if you survive ‘Access Hollywood’ everything else would kind of be fine.”
