--- title: Jared Kushner, Hope Hicks Lead Crazy White House Week description: Donald Trump's White House has seen no shortage of tumult and turnover in its first year, but this week was even more tumultuous than usual. canonical: https://time.com/5182741/jared-kushner-hope-hicks-gary-cohn-hr-mcmaster/ author: Tessa Berenson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-03-02T18:19:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T19:30:01.481Z article:section: Politics og:title: This Was a Crazy Week for the White House og:description: Staff drama from Hope Hicks to Jared Kushner overshadowed everything og:url: https://time.com/5182741/jared-kushner-hope-hicks-gary-cohn-hr-mcmaster/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt89003fb84ad985b7/69892951db2987bacc25eefe/hope-hicks-white-house-communications-director-resigning.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2405 og:image:height: 1353 og:image:alt: hope-hicks-white-house-communications-director-resigning og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Was a Crazy Week for the White House twitter:description: Staff drama from Hope Hicks to Jared Kushner overshadowed everything twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt89003fb84ad985b7/69892951db2987bacc25eefe/hope-hicks-white-house-communications-director-resigning.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Was a Crazy Week for the White House > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Mar 2, 2018 6:19 PM UTC  White House Communications Director Hope Hicks leaves the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 27, 2018. White House Communications Director Hope Hicks leaves the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 27, 2018. Leah Millis—Reuters  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Mar 2, 2018 6:19 PM UTC Donald Trump’s White House has seen no shortage of tumult and turnover in its first year, but this week was even more tumultuous than usual. In the course of just a few days, President Trump lost one of his longest-serving aides, saw his son-in-law’s power dramatically reduced and battled rumors that other key resignations are to come. In the midst of all of this, Trump scrambled to announce policies on gun control and trade, and lashed out at everyone from Attorney General [Jeff Sessions](http://time.com/5179763/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-investigation/) to actor [Alec Baldwin](http://time.com/5182486/president-trump-has-a-message-for-alex-baldwin-about-his-snl-impression/). The current set of staffing issues also seems more likely than some past changes to affect how the White House actually runs in the long term. Here’s a look at the major instances of staff drama in the White House this week. ## Hope Hicks News broke [in the New York _Times_](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/us/politics/hope-hicks-resign-communications-director.html) on Feb. 28 that [Hope Hicks](http://time.com/5180151/hope-hicks-resign-white-house-communications-director-donald-trump-what-to-know/) had decided to resign as communications director. While the White House has already chewed through multiple people in that position, Hicks’ departure will hit the West Wing— and Trump personally— the hardest. The 29-year-old had been with Trump since the beginning of his campaign, becoming one of his most reliable and influential supporters. “I cannot over-state how important Hope is to keeping this thing together,” one West Wing official [told TIME’s Philip Elliott](http://time.com/5180300/hope-hicks-resigning-donald-trump/). “She really is one of the only people who has the President’s trust and respect.” The announcement of Hicks’ exit came one day after she testified for about nine hours in front of the House Intelligence Committee, during which she admitted to telling white lies for Trump, according to the [New York _Times_](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/us/politics/hope-hicks-house-intelligence-committee-testimony.html?mtrref=www.nytimes.com), though she has reportedly been saying her White House exit doesn’t have to do with the Russia investigation. ## Jared Kushner Jared Kushner became the highest profile victim in a White House security scandal when he was told, along with other staffers operating at a Top Secret/SCI interim clearance, that his clearance would be downgraded. Losing top secret clearance will likely be [especially damaging to senior adviser Kushner](http://time.com/5178461/jared-kushner-security-clearance-trump-kelly/), who Trump has entrusted with delicate national security and foreign policy projects, including placing him in charge of brokering peace in the Middle East. “It would be very difficult for him to handle the portfolios that he has reportedly been assigned,” says Laura Terrell, clearance counsel under President George W. Bush. “For someone like Jared Kushner with a very broad remit … it’s very hard to conceive of how he could functionally do his job.” The security clearance sweep came weeks after [Rob Porter](http://time.com/5149213/president-trump-promised-to-hire-the-best-people-rob-porter-is-just-the-latest-red-flag/) resigned as staff secretary amid allegations of domestic abuse, which exposed the fact that he’d been working in a crucial White House position for more than a year on an [interim security clearance](http://time.com/5159853/rob-porter-scandal-exposed-white-house-security-risks/). (He denies the abuse.) Chief of Staff John Kelly ordered a crackdown on interim clearances last week. ## H.R. McMaster [NBC reported](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/white-house-preparing-mcmaster-exit-early-next-month-n852371) on March 1 that the Trump Administration is set to replace National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster in the coming weeks. The White House quickly [denied the report](http://time.com/5182366/h-r-mcmaster-white-house-denies-departure/), with Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah saying, “We frequently face rumor and innuendo about senior administration officials. There are no personnel announcements at this time.” Trump and McMaster have reportedly clashed in recent weeks. Last month, McMaster said in Germany that Russian meddling in the 2016 election was “incontrovertible,” and Trump rebuked him on Twitter, writing, “General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians.” > [](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/965079126829871104) ## Gary Cohn Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser, threatened Chief of Staff Kelly that he would resign if the president [imposes tariffs](http://time.com/5180901/donald-trump-steel-aluminum-tariff/) on steel and aluminum imports, [the New York _Times_ reports](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/politics/trump-chaos-oval-office.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news). After wrangling and uncertainty over what Trump would decide to do, he announced on Thursday his intention to impose the tariffs. Now Cohn is waiting to see if he actually follows through, according to the _Times_. This isn’t the first time Cohn has been on the brink of leaving the White House. In the wake of Trump’s equivocal response to white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia last summer, Cohn [told the _Financial Times_](https://www.ft.com/content/b85beea2-8924-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787) he felt “enormous pressure” to resign, and [the New York _Times_ reported](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/us/politics/gary-cohn-trump-charlottesville.html?%5Fr=1) that he even drafted a resignation letter. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5182741/jared-kushner-hope-hicks-gary-cohn-hr-mcmaster/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5182741/jared-kushner-hope-hicks-gary-cohn-hr-mcmaster/"},"headline":"This Was a Crazy Week for the White House","datePublished":"2018-03-02T18:19:51.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T19:30:01.481Z","description":"Donald Trump's White House has seen no shortage of tumult and turnover in its first year, but this week was even more tumultuous than usual.","url":"https://time.com/5182741/jared-kushner-hope-hicks-gary-cohn-hr-mcmaster/","keywords":["White House","russia","Donald Trump","jared kushner","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt89003fb84ad985b7/69892951db2987bacc25eefe/hope-hicks-white-house-communications-director-resigning.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tessa Berenson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt89003fb84ad985b7/69892951db2987bacc25eefe/hope-hicks-white-house-communications-director-resigning.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"hope-hicks-white-house-communications-director-resigning","caption":"hope-hicks-white-house-communications-director-resigning","creditText":"Leah Millis—Reuters","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/white-house/","name":"White House"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5182741/jared-kushner-hope-hicks-gary-cohn-hr-mcmaster/","name":"This Was a Crazy Week for the White House"}}]}] ```