Rare Contributor
The White House staffer who was in charge of finding and distributing positive news about President Donald Trump resigned earlier this week.
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Andy Hemming, 31, left his job as rapid response director for the White House on Monday, according to POLITICO. Hemming now plans to take a vacation, and then explore future opportunities.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders described his departure as a “mutual decision,” telling the publication that “[Hemming] could best help promote the president’s agenda on the outside. Andy is smart and very talented and we wish him all the best.”
Hemming’s departure came less than two weeks after POLITICO ran a profile story on his position.
In the profile, the publication described his day-to-day activities as monitoring television, print, and online news sources, as well as Twitter, to find positive news stories about the president, which he would then blast “back out to his list of more than 1,000 influencers.”
Those influencers, according to POLITICO, were mainly reporters but also included a few talking heads, who could disseminate the positive information to their viewers.
“They don’t always get it wrong,” Sanders said of mainstream media outlets while talking about why the position was important. “But for every one good story we push out, there are probably 150 really bad process stories, or hit pieces, on the administration. We think a lot of times, the stories that we push out have been given very little coverage.”
Sanders praised Hemming for the what he was able to accomplish, saying, “Andy does an incredible job of finding those hidden gems and trying to amplify those positive messages.”
