Petri: Hope Hicks can explain, but you’ll need a dictionary

Published 1:30 am Thursday, July 25, 2019

By Alexandra Petri

The Washington Post

A New York judge last week unsealed some documents regarding President Trump, Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, revealing evidence of conversations that left House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, with some … questions about Hope Hicks’ closed-door testimony. So many questions that he sent her a letter demanding clarification. She has yet to respond, but I assume that any response would be along these lines.

Dear Congressman Nadler,

I am writing back to clarify my previous testimony, in response to your questions. Oh my god, where to begin? I can see how it might have appeared that I was not being totally candid about my involvement or knowledge about the so-called hush so-called money so-called payments to Ms. Stormy “So-Called” Daniels.

When I said I did not discuss those payments with Mr. Cohen and/or the president, I was being totally candid. What would speaking with “and/or the president” even look like? Part of the president and part of Mr. Cohen, fused into some sort of cronenberg-beast?

When I said I did not discuss negative stories about the president, including about Ms. Daniels, prior to their release, what I meant was that I did not consider any of those stories to be anything but positive. Even the part where he hated sharks I thought was compelling.

When I said “I was never present for a conversation;” I mean, look, would you define any time Donald Trump talks to anyone as a conversation?

When I was asked directly if I had any contact with Keith Davidson during the campaign; I am still 98 percent sure that I did not had any contact with Keith Davidson during the campaign, because I have no idea who Keith Davidson is. It’s super awkward! I feel like Keith Davidson has introduced himself to me six times now. Often I’ll meet a new person who looks at me like he expects me to recognize him, and nine times out of 10, that person is Keith Davidson. Or I’ll get off the phone after a lengthy conversation with a mysteriously familiar-sounding voice, and someone will say, “Did you know that was Keith Davidson?” And no, I won’t!

When the counsel for the committee asked if I had knowledge of whether the president knew that Mr. Cohen had made payments to Stormy Daniels during the campaign, I said, “I don’t have any direct knowledge.” Did my eyes and ears convey information to my mind about whether Mr. Cohen had made payments to Stormy Daniels during the campaign? Yes! Did I have direct knowledge? Well, can I trust the information piped into my brain from these so-called eyes and ears when we know full well that sometimes we see a spider crawling toward us and it turns out to be a leaf, or that we look at Keith Davidson and see nothing at all? I don’t think so.

I see that a lot of my statements appear to be inconsistent with the evidence unsealed last week. But, you have to remember that sometimes news is fake.

About the calls, text messages and emails; look. I am on a lot of text chains. When I texted, “Keep praying! It’s working!” in response to news that there were only six stories about the payoff, that was meant for another text chain, on which some friends and I were attempting to conduct a long-distance exorcism for another mutual friend whose bachelorette got kind of out of control.

The records seem to indicate that we spoke often about the payments, but did we really converse? Or did we just make sounds with our mouths, maybe not even the kind of sound that was mutually intelligible? To me, conversation implies communicating to another human being anything that I was thinking, but I have yet to understand what anyone involved in this was or is thinking, and, like, is that even knowable?

Yes, it looks as though Michael Cohen was talking to me and to Keith Davidson at the same time on two phones, but once Keith Davidson got on the call, I really checked out.

And when I said, “I wasn’t aware of anything; I wasn’t aware of a hush payment agreement,” I meant “aware” in the deepest, truest sense. Webster defines “aware” as “having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge” or, archaically, “watchful, wary.” I was not wary of any hush payment agreement, nor did I show realization or perception of it, in the sense of really understanding something that was going on outside of myself.

I am not confident I have ever done that.

Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter @petridishes.