Cliff Sims
Clifton David Sims (born February 17, 1984 in Enterprise) is president and partner at Telegraph Creative. Previously he was the founding publisher of the Yellowhammer News, former CEO of Yellowhammer Multimedia, and a media assistant to President Donald Trump.
Sims is the son of Dwayne and Brenda Sims of Enterprise. He attended Enterprise State Junior College in 2003-2004, where he was a member of the Weevils basketball team which won the NJCAA Region 22 tournament. He also claims to have played college basketball at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. He was a songwriter and lead vocalist for an Enterprise-based rock band named "Moses".
He later enrolled at the University of Alabama where he chaired the College Republicans chapter and began contributing political reports to the conservative website, "The Daily Caller". During the 2010 election he chaired Alabama State Representative Barry Moore's campaign in his home county.
Sims began publishing a weblog called "Yellowhammer" in 2011, and expanded it into a news site in 2013. The site has been seen as a counterpoint to the Alabama Education Association-backed Alabama Political Reporter and has been noted for its overarching support for and access to Alabama State House of Representatives Speaker Mike Hubbard. Notably, Yellowhammer obtained recordings of Governor Robert Bentley's inappropriate conversations with his aide, Rebekah Caldwell Mason from an undisclosed source and made them available online. Sims appears regularly as host of "Yellowhammer Radio" on WYDE-FM.
In 2016 Sims took a leave of absence from his media company to serve as an adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. After the inauguration in January 2017, Sims was appointed as assistant communications director for White House message strategy and special assistant to the president. Brian Ellis took over as CEO of Yellowhammer.
In May 2018 it was reported that Sims had resigned from the White House to become a Senior Adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but his appointment to that position was never announced. Sims later claimed to have resigned, while White House, speaking off-the-record, told reporters he had been fired. During that year he founded a strategic consulting firm, C.D. Sims & Co.
In January 2019 St Martin's Press published Sims' memoir of his time in the White House. On Twitter, Donald Trump panned the memoir as a "boring book based on made up stories and fiction" and said that Sims "pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer." In response to criticism that he had violated non-disclosure agreements, Sims filed a lawsuit against Trump seeking to enjoin the White House or the campaign from attempting to enforce those agreements. He later dropped the suit.
In April 2019 Sims joined Telegraph Creative, a Birmingham-based digital marketing agency headed by Kevin McLendon. He was named president and partner of the firm.
Sims resumed campaign work on behalf of Trump and was elected as a co-chair of Trump Victory. He was then asked to coordinate speechwriting for the 2020 Republican National Convention, with specific duties relating to speeches given by Donald Trump Jr and Tiffany Trump.
On September 30, 2020 Sims returned to the administration as a senior adviser to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. In that role he helped to draft Ratcliffe's December 2020 Wall Street Journal guest editorial entitled "China Is National Security Threat No. 1," and his January 2021 letter to congress which strayed from the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies in arguing that China had sought to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election in favor of Joe Biden.
In accepting his appointment to the Director of National Intelligence, Sims kept his ownership share and position with Telegraph, stepping away from day-to-day operations only. In 2022 he and Telegraph were announced as equity partners with Donald Trump Jr and Taylor Budowich in the launch of the "MxM News" smartphone app.
In 2024 U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson appointed Sims to serve on the United States–China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Sims and his wife, Megan, reside in Homewood and attend The Church at Brook Hills. In September 2021 he released a song he wrote and performed, entitled "U, Ur Mom & Me" about their experience adopting an infant from Colombia.
Publications
- Sims, Cliff (2019) Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House. New York, New York: Thomas Dunne Books / St Martin's Press ISBN 9781250223906
References
- Brand, Carole (June 22, 2010) "Moses band to record new album in Enterprise" Dothan Eagle
- "Birmingham media CEO joining Trump campaign as adviser" (September 29, 2016) Birmingham Business Journal
- West, Ty (January 19, 2017) "Yellowhammer CEO to take role in Trump White House." Birmingham Business Journal
- Gore, Leada (May 10, 2018) "Cliff Sims, Yellowhammer founder, named Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo." The Birmingham News
- Karni, Annie & Maggie Haberman (January 29, 2019) "The Many Ways to Leave the White House." The New York Times
- Sullivan, Kate (February 12, 2019) "Ex-White House aide Cliff Sims sues Trump over nondisclosure agreements." CNN
- West, Ty (April 8, 2019) "Yellowhammer founder, White House staffer Cliff Sims joins Bham agency." Birmingham Business Journal
- Karl, Jonathan; Will Steakin & Terrance Smith (August 24, 2020) "Former Trump staffer who penned tell-all book and sued the president, back working on Republican Convention." ABC News
- Lippman, Daniel (October 2, 2020) "Cliff Sims, who wrote tell-all White House memoir, joins spy office" Politico
- Gore, Leada (September 21, 2021) "Cliff Sims, Alabama native and Trump advisor, releases new song." The Birmingham News