Look, I know that we’ve all cringed over the inappropriate relationship that President Donald Trump has with his daughter Ivanka. There was that one time when 16-year-old Ivanka was co-hosting the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant, and Trump asked the then-Miss Universe: “Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?”
Then there was the time in 2004 on The Howard Stern Show when he OK’d the radio host calling his daughter “a piece of ass.” Then there was his casual incest joke during his 2006 interview on The View in which Trump claimed that if Ivanka weren’t his daughter, he’d be dating her.
But this new revelation, coming from the book of all books, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, might be the most disturbing.
In the book, which is causing quite a stir, author Michael Wolff makes the claim that the president treats his daughter like his wife, and his communications director, Hope Hicks, like his daughter. The relationship between Trump and Ivanka is so intertwined that staff members consider her to be the real first lady.
Here’s how Newsweek, which received an advance copy of the book, describes the entire sordid affair:
In an excerpt from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, it’s alleged that Trump has a paternal relationship with his communications director Hope Hicks, while eldest daughter Ivanka has long been viewed as the real first lady.
Hicks and Trump had a very close relationship that Trump’s inner circle came to view in familial terms. “[Hope] Hicks was in fact thought of as Trump’s real daughter, while Ivanka was thought of as his real wife,” the book states.
Indeed, despite the book also claiming that Trump referred to Hicks as “the best piece of tail” Corey Lewandowski would ever have—referencing the rumored on-off relationship between Hicks and Trump’s former campaign manager—Wolff claimed that the president “seemed to treat Hicks in a protective and even paternal way.”
Hicks, 29, whom Trump refers to as “Hopey” and “Hopester,” is considered to be a favored member of Trump’s inner circle. She reportedly knows how to speak the president’s language and has a “great Trump radar.”
“She has a great ‘Trump radar’ [in] understanding how he thinks. ... She loves him like a father in some ways, and I think that is an important loyalty to the family,” Brad Parscale, the digital director for Trump’s 2016 campaign, told Newsweek in November.
Friends of Hicks believe that she will need therapy once she’s done working in the White House.
“Following the Trump victory and her [Hope Hicks] move into the White House, her friends and intimates talked with great concern about what kind of therapies and recuperation she would need after her tenure was finally over,” according to a book excerpt posted in GQ magazine.
Point is, all of this is getting really, really, really weird and messy and incestuous.