Luke Ford

The Washington Post makes Cassidy Hutchinson sound like Tracy Flick (the Reese Witherspoon character in the movie Election):

Cassidy Hutchinson was about to turn 24, already a key official at the White House after a meteoric ascent from obscurity, when she heard a startling noise. It was early December 2020, and President Donald Trump was livid because his attorney general said the election had not been stolen.

Upon investigating the noise, Hutchinson was told by a White House valet that Trump had thrown a porcelain plate against the dining room wall, which was now dripping ketchup. Hutchinson grabbed a towel to wipe up the mess as the valet told her to steer clear of the president because “he’s really, really ticked off about this right now.”

It was a turning point in an extraordinary effort to subvert the transfer of presidential power, as Hutchinson recalled it in dramatic testimony Tuesday before the House Jan. 6 committee. In a riveting two hours, Hutchinson added layers of stunning detail from her one-of-a-kind vantage as principal assistant to Mark Meadows, then White House chief of staff, which put her steps from the Oval Office….

On paper, Hutchinson had been one of the youngest and least experienced members of the White House staff. Yet on Tuesday, there she was: Now 25, in a bold white jacket, confidently and calmly testifying that the most powerful man in the country, Trump, had been out of control and stoking an armed insurrection….

In Trump’s White House, Hutchinson had extraordinary access and in the eyes of many White House staffers, she had inordinate power. Some derisively called her “Chief Cassidy,” and even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s staff asked White House aides why she was in on legislative meetings….

Hutchinson had a sudden rise to find herself as the center of power.

During the first impeachment trial, Hutchinson grew close to Meadows as a legislative affairs staffer in the White House, former advisers said. Once he was named chief of staff in March 2020, he immediately elevated her, a former adviser said, and she eventually became his principal assistant. She was given an office next to his, which in turn put her a few doors away from the Oval Office.

Brendan Buck, a former aide to House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), said in an interview that Hutchinson “was always by his side … when there were meetings you’d expect to be principal level or very small senior staff level, he would always insist she was in the room.” Buck said she was usually a quiet presence. “She was largely there to take notes,” Buck said. “It’s just unusual to have a relatively junior aide to either be in principal level or senior staff level, but it was his call, so we deferred to him.”

She was viewed throughout the White House as speaking for Meadows when she gave other staff members orders, and regularly said “Mark wants” or “the chief says” — the chief being Meadows.

A former White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, said that Hutchinson traveled constantly with Meadows, going on Air Force One, answering his calls, and getting texts from members of Congress. Key members of the White House staff who wanted to get a message to Trump or Meadows often went through her.

The Washington Post article makes it clear that she was not liked, she was not respected, and that she was out of place at the top. The Post implicitly says that she did not rise on merit.

If Cassidy Hutchinson maneuvered her way to the top ala Tracy Flick, and now has fallen out with the powerful men who made her, then she may have an agenda beyond telling the truth. If she wasn’t intimate with Mark Meadows, then her rise makes no sense. So when faced with a choice between sense and nonsense, I choose to make sense. The simplest explanation for Cassidy’s rise and turn is the Tracy Flick story.

On Steve Bannon’s podcast Friday (July 1, 2022), Peter Navarro says: “The joke around the White House was when Meadows came in, he brought his harem in. There’s like five women he brings in, three to personnel the outer office (including Cassidy Hutchinson) and two for the press office… [Cassidy] was a running joke… The only time I saw [Cassidy], she was sitting with a big bag of candy doing nothing. I couldn’t figure out why she was there. Meadows gave these people high ranks.”

Report: “Cassidy hasn’t divulged much about her personal life for good reason. As of now, there is no record of Cassidy’s marriage to anybody and she has never mentioned her spouse, hence it is assumed that Cassidy is not married and has no husband as of June 2022.

Because she is obviously so private about her personal life, there is no record of her dating anybody today, hence it is thought that she is single. Our efforts to learn more about her love life were futile because there was no sign of her lover on the internet.”

Meadows makes only one reference to Cassidy in his 2021 memoir The Chief’s Chief but links that reference to Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who had an affair with President Bill Clinton:

I remembered that earlier in the afternoon, just after we’d arrived, Cassidy Hutchinson, my White House assistant, had dropped off a few boxes of candies and gifts with the presidential seal on them. These weren’t much, just cardboard boxes that said “President Donald Trump” with an eagle and a presidential seal, but they were valued by supporters. It was the best we could do on short notice. Most of the time, we kept these gifts in a small room off the Oval Office—what we jokingly referred to as the “Monica Lewinsky Room”…

In her testimony to the January 6 Committee, Cassidy seems upset that Meadows doesn’t look up enough from his phone to gaze into her eyes and that he’s not taking her input with sufficient seriousness:

* What was Mark’s reaction — Mr. Meadows’ reaction to this list of weapons that people had in the crowd?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: When Tony and I went in to talk to Mark that morning, Mark was sitting on his couch and on his phone which was something typical. And I remember Tony just got right into it. He was like, sorry, I just want to let you know and informed him, like, this is how many people we have outside the mags right now.

These are the weapons that we’re going to have. It’s possible he listed more weapons off that I just don’t recall. And gave him a brief but — and concise explanation, but also fairly — fairly thorough. And I remember distinctly Mark not looking up from his phone, right? I remember Tony finishing his explanation and it taking a few seconds for Mark to say his name.

Because I almost said, Mark, did you hear him? And then Mark chimed in. It was like, Alright, anything else? Still looking down at his phone.

* Mark still hadn’t popped out of his office or said anything about it. So that’s when I went into his office. I saw that he was sitting on his couch on his cell phone, same as the morning where he was just kind of scrolling and typing. I said, hey, are you watching the TV, Chief? Because his TV was small and I — you can see it, but I didn’t know if he was really paying attention.

I said, you watching the TV, Chief? He was like, yeah. I said, the rioters are getting really close. Have you talked to the President? And he said, no, he wants to be alone right now; still looking at his phone. So I start to get frustrated because, you know, I sort of felt like I was watching a — this is not a great comparison, but a bad car accident that was about to happen where you can’t stop it, but you want to be able to do something.

* LIZ CHENEY: Not long after the rioters broke into the Capitol, you described what happened with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. [Begin videotape]

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: No more than a minute, minute and a half later, I see Pat Cipollone barreling down the hallway towards our office; and rush right in, looked at me, said, is Mark in his office? And I said, yes. He just looked at me and started shaking his head and went over — opened Mark’s office door, stood there with the door propped open and said something to — Mark is still sitting on his phone.

I remember like glancing and he’s still sitting on his phone.

She sounds a bit like a scorned lover enacting revenge.

According to The Sun:

DEBBIE Meadows is the wife of Mark Meadows — the 29th White House Chief of Staff.

The power couple has been married for 42 years, and they originally built a bond off of their shared love for business.

Debbie and Mark have two children together named Haley and Blake.

Tim Alberta writes October 4, 2020:

In my book, American Carnage, I wrote that [Mark] Meadows is the only politician I’ve encountered who stacks up to a real-life version of Frank Underwood, the cunning main character in the show “House of Cards.”

We resemble the people we come close to. Cassidy Hutchinson came very close to Mark Meadows.

The Washington Post has a history of slyly making its points about adultery among the powerful.

David Talbot writes in Salon September 14, 2004 about Kitty Kelly’s book on the Bushes:

George H.W. Bush and wife Barbara dismissed Bill Clinton as a pathetic hillbilly when he challenged the incumbent in 1992. But, Kelley writes, Clinton was one of the few Bush opponents who knew how to back them down. As colorful stories from Clinton’s sexual past in Arkansas began to surface during the campaign, a Clinton aide began digging into the senior Bush’s own robust adultery. This included, writes Kelley, two long affairs — one with Jennifer Fitzgerald, Bush’s White House deputy chief of protocol, who, as the Washington Post once slyly put it, “has served President-elect George Bush in a variety of positions,” and one with an Italian woman with whom he set up house in a New York apartment in the 1960s. The Clinton aide told Kelley, “I took my list of Bush women, including one whom he had made an ambassador, to his campaign operatives. I said I knew we were vulnerable on women, but I wanted to make damn sure they knew they were vulnerable too.” After the eruption over Clinton’s mistress Gennifer Flowers died down, sexual infidelity did in fact become a moot issue in the campaign.

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