House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has revamped her press operation. | AP Photo Pelosi retools communications shop to battle Trump

Like everyone else in Washington, House Democrats have been struggling to keep up with President Donald Trump — or the continuing revelations about his administration.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is hoping a revamped press operation will help. Monday, she’ll announce the hiring of Ashley Etienne as communications director and senior adviser, calling her “uniquely equipped to lead House Democrats’ efforts to expose the dangerous and incompetent agenda of the Trump administration.”


Etienne will have three main focuses: oversight, ethics and Russia. She’ll be charged with trying to keep up a consistent, coordinated line of attack for House Democrats while others handle the daily fray. That will include sharpening Democratic messaging, and collaborating with the various Democratic caucuses and the Senate Democrats.

Trump, said Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff Drew Hammill, is “always going to be a challenge because he’s scattershot,” and so the question is “figuring out what are those core things that we want to continue to build a narrative on.”

“Few people are better at being able to start a narrative than Ashley,” Hammill said, explaining why he recruited Etienne for the position.

Hammill, meanwhile, will shift to a role centered on determining how best to deploy Pelosi herself and guiding the Democratic minority toward going on the offensive on issues.

Pelosi is also promoting her deputy communications director, Caroline Behringer, to be senior communications adviser. Behringer will be the point person for the Republican majority’s efforts on Obamacare repeal and tax issues.

Etienne is returning to Pelosi’s shop after spending the past two years in the Obama White House, running Cabinet press operations. Before her first tour in the minority leader’s office, which included being one of the point people on the 2013 government shutdown, she worked on the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee for Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), leading the response against then-Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) ahead of the 2012 election on the Benghazi investigation, Fast and Furious, holding then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, the claims of an IRS scandal and Solyndra.

She also helped shape the “war against women” rhetoric that was a significant theme of the Democrats’ 2012 campaigns.

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