In the White House world of rival power centers, 28-year-old Hope Hicks reports directly to the president. Hicks pulls down the same salary as Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon -- $179,000 -- and keeps a low profile. Hicks is devoted to the advancement of Donald Trump. He calls her Hopester and she calls him Mr. Trump. Hope Hicks views her job, ultimately, as "someone who is installed where she is in order to help, but not change, the leader of the free world."

Previously flying under the radar, Hicks was at the president's side this week, during his explosive interview with the New York Times. In a series of bombshell statements, Trump said he wished he had never hired Attorney General Jeff Sessions given his recusal from the Russia investigation. He left open firing special counsel Robert Mueller, especially if he investigated Trump's business affairs.

Hicks also may be one of the only long-term survivors with the arrival of incoming communications director Anthony Scaramucci who said on his first press briefing on Friday, "Dan [Scavino] and Hope Hicks are staying. As it relates to the other people in the comms shop, I’ve got to get to know them.”

Trump may love her, and it seems that Hicks did interject into the president's New York Times interview nudges like reminding him that he didn't have to answer every question. Hicks has no intention of trying to save the president from himself. She believes in him and the very reason she has his ear is because Hicks stays off TV and doesn't communicate with the press on sensitive topics. A total loyalist, Hicks never makes herself the story.

McCain's primary rival urges him to step aside after diagnosis -- and suggests she could replace him The Washington Post

Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz) primary opponent Kelli Ward, lost no time in taking a tough response to news of his brain cancer diagnosis. Forgetting the critical work that the now-deceased Sen. Ted Kenndy completed after his own diagnosis of brain cancer, the next day Ward suggested that McCain should step aside for her.

“I hope Sen. McCain is going to look long and hard at this, that his family and his advisers are going to look at this, and they’re going to advise him to step away as quickly as possible, so that the business of the country and the business of Arizona being represented at the federal level can move forward,” said Ward. Note the the governor, not Ward, would appoint McCain's successor until a special election was called. Still, Ward was on a full-court press for McCain to step aside -- just in case you thought empathy was her middle name.

Ward posted on her website that McCain’s cancer is “both devastating and debilitating” and he “owes it to the people of Arizona to step aside” when he’s no longer able to perform his duties. Something tells me, she wouldn't be joining those three Republican women senators who brought the health care bill to a screeching halt this week.

More news from Trumplandia

Ivanka Trump Received at Least $12.6 Million Since 2016, Disclosure Shows New York Times

House panel to interview Kushner on Tuesday Politico

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday evening issued a statement contradicting President Trump’s claim that Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s attorney general, allowed the Russian lawyer who met with three Trump associates, including his son, into the United States. “In Sept. 2015, DHS paroled Natalia Veselnitskaya into the U.S. in concurrence with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, allowing her to participate in a client’s legal proceedings,” the DHS statement to BuzzFeed News read. “Ms. Veselnitskaya was subsequently paroled into the U.S. several times between 2015 and 2016, ending in February 2016. In June 2016, she was issued a B1/B2 nonimmigrant visa (a standard tourist visa) by the U.S. Department of State.”

These facts contradict a statement America's loose-lips President Trump said in Paris on Thursday that “Somebody said that her visa or her passport to come into the country was approved by Attorney General Lynch. Now, maybe that's wrong. I just heard that a little while ago, but a little surprised to hear that. So, she was here because of Lynch,” echoing a conspiracy theory that the lawyer was actually part of a Democratic Party plot.

Former Attorney General Lynch's spokesperson immediately issued a statement insisting that she had no authority over whether or not the Russian lawyer was allowed to enter the country.

In a potentially related matter, House Judiciary Committee Democrats are questioning why Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions settled a Dept of Justice Case cheaply, with the very client that Natalia Veselnitskaya was representing.

Under the Obama Administration her client Prevezon was scheduled to go on trial for allegedly laundering money from a $230 million tax fraud. Sessions settled the case with a $6 million penalty, avoiding a trial completely.

House Judiciary ranking member John Conyers and other Dems wrote a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking whether lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya had a hand in settlement talks between Russian real estate firm Prevezon Holdings Ltd. and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Related: The Russian Attorney at the Center of the Trump Jr. Scandal The Atlantic

“She’s like tank,” says her friend, the Russian-born film director Andrei Nekrasov. “Maybe she overstepped some bounds when she was there [in New York last June]. But she felt she could do something on behalf of Russia. That’s the kind of person she is. She could get misty-eyed talking about this stuff. She’s a patriot.”

And it was evidently this sense of patriotism that took her from obscure origins as a regional prosecutor in Russia to Trump Tower last summer—and from there to the center of a scandal engulfing the American president.