Shades of Power in the Age of Trump

Yes, Trump ran to obliterate the old order in D.C. But power? Power can’t be destroyed. In Washington, power shape-shifts. It falls into new hands, gets put to new use. And now more than ever, power is popping up in some very weird places. To find out where, we polled the city’s clout class—the Old Guard and the newcomers alike—and determined who holds real sway.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images.

1. Hope Hicks, White House Communications Director

Strange are the things that can happen in an age such as this—when a guy like Donald Trump can become president. Things like: A 29-year-old, just three years removed from a gig with Ivanka Trump's fashion line (doing PR mostly but also a little modeling, too), can become the president's most trusted aide. With a boss who blew into Washington distrustful of the natives, Hicks is among the last of the original campaign staffers to remain by Trump's side. And in a West Wing where power is measured by proximity to the president, her presence there is a constant.

Inside Trump World, she is regarded as a de facto member of the royal family, with all the deference that confers. “Hope is feared and revered in the West Wing,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway tells us. But she remains unburdened by the baggage—nepotism laws, grand-jury investigations, brand stigma—that afflicts the actual Trumps.

The key to her power? She avoids the spotlight and serves ruthlessly. It's been enough to help her evade the wrath of Trump and the scrutiny of the media (if not the growing curiosity of Robert Mueller). Even when scandal inches close, as it did earlier this month when the White House bungled the dismissal of staff secretary Rob Porter—who Hicks was said to have dated—she emerges, influence seemingly intact. For now, she's still directing (or deflecting) much of what comes at Trump. “To the public, she remains in the background,” says Conway. “To the president, she is front and center.”

Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

2. Mike Pence, Vice President

You think he's quietly positioning himself for the presidency? He's acting more like he's already got the job. Pence, who pressed his prerogatives during the transition, has stocked the Cabinet and the federal agencies with arch-conservative allies and set himself up as a crucial link to congressional Republicans who turn to him to discover what the hell the actual president is doing. All the while his shameless lickspittlery keeps him in the boss's good graces. In a West Wing run by a novice clown, the stolid hack is king.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

3. Robert Mueller, Special Counsel, Justice Department

Consider this man's place in the public consciousness. He's never seen or heard from, and yet he never drifts from the bull's-eyed center of national attention. The intrigue is deserved. After all, the fate of Donald Trump's presidency—now out of his own tiny hands and in Mueller's proportionally sized ones—hinges on what the former FBI director turns up in his probe of Russian election-meddling. But it's not just the White House Mueller could be influencing. Should he find something sensational and release a report this year, he could turn the midterms into a referendum on impeachment, and maybe swing Congress, too.

From left: Mark Wilson/Getty Images; Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images.

4. Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader & Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader

Republicans live in mortal fear that Schumer and Pelosi—or “Chuck and Nancy,” in Trumpspeak—will get the president alone and trick him somehow. That's what they did last fall at the White House, striking a deal on immigration reform—before panicked Republicans and White House staffers persuaded Trump to renege. Rarely is the minority this powerful. “It's hard to imagine minority leader [John] Boehner or minority leader [Mitch] McConnell ever being able to pull a fast one on President Obama,” one Democrat says, “but Chuck and Nancy are able to do that because of who this president is.”

Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

5. Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency