Hope Hicks

One of the outcomes of November’s election is that Americans can once again trust their own eyes and call out the obvious when they see it. President Biden long ago lost the mental acuity to serve as the nation’s chief executive. Progressive causes like climate change, diversity hiring and transgender men participating in women’s sports are ridiculous. And highly dubious prosecutions seemingly launched as political weapons are exactly what they appear to be. In a Friday morning double-header Americans witnessed in real time the crumbling of the last two vestiges of the lawfare campaign against former and future president Donald Trump. What were once touted as a dream of the left to bring down a king will at best be reduced to obscure footnotes in the annals of history.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for COVID-19. The Trumps underwent testing for the virus after Hope Hicks, one of his top aides, received a positive diagnosis on Wednesday. Trump has been campaigning across the country this week. He was in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday night for his first debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden and was in Duluth, Minnesota the day after. On Thursday he attended a fundraiser at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Trump also appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night, where he discussed Hicks's diagnosis. 'She did test positive, I just heard about this,' he said.

Oscar Wilde once observed that only very superficial people don’t judge things by their appearances. Like many of Wilde’s quips, that observation has the dual advantage of being both witty and true. Its apparent flippancy — in fact, its flippancy is genuine, not just apparent — does not so much conceal as embody the deep truth it expresses. Thomas Aquinas also appreciated the importance of appearance as the ambassador of truth. Aquinas tended to speak of pulchritudo, ‘beauty,’ which he congregated with the good and the true as interwoven ‘transcendentals.’ The beautiful, Aquinas wrote, is id quod visum placet, that which having been seen, pleases.

Every week is extraordinary in the Trump administration — but this week seems stranger than most. Matters are rumbling in the belly of the beast. On Tuesday, we learned that Jared Kushner had his security clearance downgraded. Today, we learn that Hope Hicks, famously Trump’s most trusted aide, has resigned, a day after she testified to the House Intelligence Committee as part of the Russia investigation. Hicks stonewalled questions from the committee for several hours, though she did reportedly open up a little on certain aspects of Trump’s transition. She is the fourth Trump White House communications director to quit in just over a year. It can't be easy leading the war against fake news.