At Fox, “she didn’t find it exciting,” says someone close to her, even working with Lachlan Murdoch. “She was bored.” Plus, a relationship didn’t work out, partly over politics.

--snip-- But in recent months, several factors caused Hicks to warm to the idea of returning. (Hicks declined to comment.)

According to sources who spoke with Hicks, she had become increasingly unhappy living and working in Los Angeles. For one thing, she found the pace of Fox slow, even if she reported to Lachlan Murdoch. “She didn’t find it exciting. She was bored,” a former West Wing official said. She also struggled with being a Trumper in Hollywood. A source close to Hicks told me she “never felt super welcome” in the entertainment industry. At dinner parties she defended the president, a source said. Sources also told me she was lonely. (Hicks’s family is on the East Coast. She briefly dated a Hollywood producer, but the relationship didn’t last, in part, because of politics, one source said.)

The announcement of Hicks’s return noted she’ll officially be working with Trump’s son-in-law. But a former West Wing colleague said she’ll only have one real boss. “It’ll be two minutes before Trump’s calling her into the Oval asking her what she thinks about things.”