i want to bring in cnn senior political analyst david gearingen and olivia nuzi for washington magazine. olivia, first, hope hicks is that a critical departure for the white house and president. you wrote a great piece for new york manage entitled inside the cut-throat battle to be the next hope hicks about the blood test letting between two early front runners be director of strategic communications appear treasury department spokesman tony saig. both former fox news contributors. fell us in on what source are telling you in kellyanne conway. source told me the president mentioned her, something part of the discussion there. and he is bringing up names like bill shine, the former fox news
an extension an extension of him. she was a nicer version of him if she was an extension of him i have to say. right. david with olivia be what she said in the post hope hicks era. it s a vast unknown for the aides who worry that the president might unravel without her. is there a shift we will see. it depends on whether he finds a successor. what is surprising the conversation, some white house aides are urging the president to the to appoint a new communications director and not a chief of staff. both ideas are really dumb. for almost 40 years now presidents have had communication directors. i happened to be one of those in a long line. but they ve also had a strong chiefs of staff or at least sought to have. in both cases you want the message disciplined, the kind ever discipline that works in the campaign a works in the
impulses and the public. yes. yes. go ahead, david. one more thing. sure. the communications director is the coordinator of the entire executive branch in terms of communications or the daily conversation was the chungss people in the agencies about what you re going to say that day about what may be happening on national security, or some if you are pushing a big initiative on the domestic side. so it s a crucial role. if you don t fill it it seems like that i think it s idiotic without filling it. make sure you have a strong chief of staff and communications director. we ll be here reporting about it and you guys will be here commenting. i appreciate your perspective. when we come back, the president congratulating roseanne barr on the huge ratings for the comeback. but why he paying attention to how many people are watching a tv show?
that was considered a rare success. but a communications director, david could speak to this better than i could did it s a a lot of long-term planning, a lot of planning how you roll out different policies trying to figure out you know what kind of traveling, what kind of public events you do, what kind of access the press gets to the president. it s just not just wheating. i think because the president does throw everything off course by say things nobody even on his own staff is prepared for him to say without any warning, that s way people have this idea that he does not need traditional staff, that they re irrelevant. in a lot of ways they are. a former white house official described it to me as being on speed in that press shop because you jump from one topic to the next to the next. but i don t think that means that he does not need staff. i think probably more than any other president recently this president needs staff to try and kind of be a barrier between his
well what else happened? what other overtures were made. rick stengel david gearingen who served four presidents said tonight it s the most incompetent cover-up he has ever seen. to your earlier point about malpractice in at least media management, does this now mean they will always be reactive? there is no there is no getting the upper hand? they don t look institutionally willing or able to get the upper hand. so i m going to come back to that, brian. because at the state department i dealt with russian disinformation and russian active measures they call it. i want to add one thing to what the intelligence officer said. is that sometimes the russians do a the the faint. maybe they wanted us to think they re tampering in this election. they have a term of art in the russian military called the gray zone. the gray zone is about the fact that nothing seems clear at all.