Introduction
John Hogan Gidley is a political aide serving as White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary since 2019 in the U.S. He previously served in the Trump Administration as Special Assistant to U.S. President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019.
Early life and career
Gidley was born in Arkansas. He graduated from the University of Mississippi with a degree in broadcast journalism and a minor in political science in 1998.
Gidley served as the director of Huck PAC. His past activities include director of media operations for Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Executive Director of the South Carolina Republican Party, Press Secretary to the David Beasley for Senate campaign, the Karen Floyd for Superintendent of Education campaign, and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole's campaign committee. He was the director of communications for the 2012 presidential campaign of Rick Santorum.
Trump administration
The Trump administration announced on October 10, 2017 that Gidley would serve as Deputy Press Secretary, and he started his job at the White House the day after.
In February 2018, Gidley said that Trump was speaking "tongue-in-cheek" when Trump said that it was "treasonous" for Democrats not to applaud him during the State of the Union address. Later that February, after Special Counsel Mueller's investigation led to the indictments of a number of Russians for election interference, Gidley said that Democrats and the media had done more to create "chaos" in the United States than the Russian government.
In June 2019 Gidley was considered a candidate for White House Press Secretary when Sarah Sanders announced she was stepping down from the role. Stephanie Grisham was named to the position with Gidley continuing on as Deputy Press Secretary.
On September 5, 2019, The Washington Times published an opinion piece written by Gidley and press secretary Stephanie Grisham, titled "The Washington Post's lost summer". The authors asserted the Post had not reported on several Trump accomplishments, although the paper actually did report on them. In one instance, the piece linked to a Post story titled "Trump becomes first sitting president to set foot into North Korea" as the authors asserted the paper had not reported the event.