Russian artist Alexander Sokht, Between books and cats
Today’s top stories:
Trump’s war on Canada escalated yesterday as he ordered 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called his bluff, and the tariffs have taken effect for now.
Trump’s war on the free press also escalated Friday, after Whiskey Pete Hegseth fired the editor and publisher of Stars and Stripes because of their coverage of the dire conditions on the carrier S.S. Lincoln and their criticism of the Pentagon’s interference in their coverage.
Trump is threatening Iran with economic sanctions and Iran is threatening a “devastating response.” Iran also responded to Trump’s claim that the Strait of Hormuz is a “U.S. territory.”
ICE is getting a new weapon to use against immigrants and citizens who get in the way of their fascist attacks: shock gloves.
The disaster in Indiana is still going on after massive storms, flooding, and power outages.
The Trump administration’s latest round of tariffs against billions of dollars worth of Canadian goods took effect just after midnight Saturday, after the two countries failed to seal a last-minute trade deal that satisfied both sides.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Ottawa would retaliate “dollar for dollar” after the White House delivered on its threat to impose crushing 50 per cent tariffs on a wide range of products. The two governments’ trade representatives said they had come close to finalizing an agreement in recent days, but Carney said Ottawa ultimately couldn’t accept the terms on the table.
“I have decided to suspend trade negotiations with the U.S. and have directed Canada’s negotiators to return to Ottawa,” the prime minister said in a statement.
“They have worked hard, in good faith, to defend the interests of Canadians throughout these negotiations up until the very last minute. However, last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.” [….]
In his own statement, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said talks crumbled because Canada didn’t accept the agreement the administration had offered.
“Tonight, Canada declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week, despite the U.S. offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days,” Greer said in a statement.
“In addition, Canada is continuing to maintain its prolonged retaliation against the United States, including, among other things, flat out prohibitions on certain American goods and services.”
Now we wait for Trump to TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out), likely right before the stock market opens on Monday.
Crucial trade talks between the United States and Canada to stave off punishing new tariffs by the Trump administration on Canadian goods collapsed late Friday, with Canada saying it would retaliate “dollar for dollar.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said he had decided to suspend the talks because the American side had introduced last-minute terms that were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”
By Merle Keller
He added that the talks, which had been going on for weeks and had intensified in the past few days, had marked important progress but had ultimately “not been enough to meet our objectives for Canadians.”
United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told reporters that Canada had walked away from the negotiating table, minutes before a deadline ushering in new 50 percent tariffs by the Trump administration on a broad range of Canadian goods.
“Tonight, Canada declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week, despite the U.S. offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market,” Mr. Greer said on a virtual briefing with the press.
“New demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days,” Mr. Greer added.
Shortly before Mr. Greer’s statement to the press, U.S. Customs and Border Protection sent out guidance for importers saying that the Canadian products that the president had identified would face tariffs after 12:01 a.m.
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested. I still expect Trump to TACO.
Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon on Friday fired the publisher and editor of the independent military news outlet Stars and Stripes for “insubordination.”
Long-time publisher Max Lederer and Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin were given “separation notices” that allow five days to appeal the decision, CBS News reports. Reporter Lara Korte announced on social media that she had also been fired.
Korte and Slavin traced the decision back to interviews they did that aired on CBS Sunday Morning in July.
“According to the notice, I am being fired for stating in a CBS interview that censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line. The Pentagon’s public affairs office has charged me with insubordination,” Slavin told CBS.
“I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department’s own policies.” [….]
Portrait of Kolya with a Cat, by Arkady Plastov
“It’s a shame for the institution and service members, who swore to defend the Constitution and deserve the right to a free and independent press,” Korte wrote in a series of posts about her firing.
Although the newspaper operates within the Department of Defense, it is legally mandated by Congress to remain editorially independent.
Lederer had announced on Wednesday his intention to step down from the post he’s held since 2007, since his opinions on how to run the media organization differed in “fundamental ways” to the Pentagon’s plans for Stars and Stripes, the newspaper reported.
“I think the right step is for me to step down, get out of the way, and let different leadership step in and continue to make this, the great organization that it is, even better,” he said.
Lederer was slated to finish up his tenure on Sept. 30, but now both he and his editor-in-chief have been turfed out.
The move comes after President Donald Trump, Hegseth, and other military leaders downplayed reporting on dire conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln reported by families of service members.
The Pentagon on Friday fired the editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes and a top reporter for insubordination after they spoke publicly against any interference by the Defense Department in the military news outlet that has a long history of editorial independence. It was the latest move by an administration that has grown increasingly aggressive toward the news media.
Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of the military newspaper that is partly funded by the Pentagon, told The Associated Press he was dismissed for insubordination after an interview he gave that objected to potential censorship by the U.S. military. He received a notice of separation, as did publisher Max Lederer — who had just announced his upcoming retirement — and Middle East reporter Lara Korte, Slavin said.
Slavin said he was being fired “for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.” Korte participated in the same interview.
“I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department’s own policies,” Slavin said.
Grocery shelves have been empty for days. Children who had just started school haven’t seen their classrooms in more than a week. Insulin has spoiled in warm refrigerators, and people who depend on oxygen cannot pump it from their tanks.
Electricity has been out for 10 days throughout much of Gary, Ind., since deadly storms ripped through, knocking down trees and power lines. On Friday, residents said they were growing increasingly desperate, even as another round of rain was on the way.
Lecture en fauteuil rouge, by French artist Flora Merleau
“Every day I’m crying,” Renita Theus, 41, said outside her darkened apartment, where her car remained trapped under a fallen tree. “It’s hot in the house. I toss and turn and can’t sleep. I walked to the dollar store and they’re all out of candles and batteries.”
Storms on Aug. 11 caused flooding and havoc throughout the Chicago area and neighboring northern Indiana, hitting Gary, where one-third of residents live in poverty, especially hard. More than a week later, the regional power company said its crews were working tirelessly to restore electricity but were overwhelmed by unprecedented levels of damage.
The utility, Northern Indiana Public Service Co., said on Friday that 43,400 of its customers remain without power in the region, down from more than 300,000 in the storm’s immediate aftermath. Service is expected to be restored to Gary by Tuesday, the company said, calling it a “monumental undertaking.”
On Friday, Gov. Mike Braun said that he had requested an expedited major disaster declaration from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that would allow more assistance to pour into the state. Last week, President Trump granted an emergency declaration for Indiana counties affected by the disaster, and a state relief fund is providing emergency aid grants of as much as $5,000.
“I will do everything in my power to ensure Hoosiers have the resources needed to recover,” said Mr. Braun, a Republican.
Local officials warned that cleanup would likely take months.
“It’s just widespread devastation throughout the city of Gary,” said Larry E. Tillman, the chief of the fire department.
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested. So far, Trump has said nothing publicly about this disaster. I guess he’s too busy with his building projects.
That’s all I have for today. Take care everyone!
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“Come on, Natalie Harp is a perfectly normal young republican woman with lofty aspirations.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s hard to know where to start writing these posts these days. Everything is so surreal that I feel like I should be sharing paintings by Dalí or Ernst rather than political cartoons. However, the political cartoons are more spot on than most of the press coverage. BB did some great coverage on the bizarre role of Natalie Harp, the human printer, this week. The more folks dig, the weirder she gets and the more pathetic Orange Caligula looks.
Tom Schaller of Public Notice had this interesting analysis today under the heading “Travel with Natalie. How three words from Jon Ossoff prompted an epic MAGA crashout”.
Donald Trump is easily triggered. That’s hardly news.
He’s temperamental and emotional in a way that supposedly disqualifies women from serving in powerful political or corporate roles. He lashes out at critics, opponents, the media, even his own staff. Were it not so frightening, it would be Veep-level hysterical that the man atop the world’s most powerful government and military lacks the impulse control of a high schooler.
But the questions now swirling around Trump’s personal assistant Natalie Harp — and especially the way Sen. Jon Ossoff unleashed a media firestorm this week by invoking her name — offer a long overdue lesson for Democrats on how to successfully bait Trump and his MAGA cohorts for maximum effect.
Let’s start by unpacking what Ossoff actually said last Sunday, which was not nearly as salacious as the ensuing MAGA meltdown would have you believe.
“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks,” said Ossoff, of Trump. “See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”doesn’t””
Ossoff says that Trump doesn’t want to do his job but wants to “travel with Natalie”
In just four sentences, Ossoff’s carefully crafted language shattered Trump’s curated image as a tough, tireless, troop-loving, America First warrior. The Georgia senator indicted Trump’s military misadventures and octogenarian stamina. He highlighted Trump’s sloth and greed. Ossoff depicted Trump as a detached, spoiled, soft, and vainglorious brat who could make Charli XCX blush.
But the kicker was these three words: “travel with Natalie.”
Ossoff’s statement would have delivered the same critique of Trump as an entitled, lazy lout had he omitted any mention of Harp. But he dropped her name — and only her first name, plus the first-person plural “their” for emphasis — to pair them and suggest a degree of interpersonal intimacy.
Ossoff’s gambit worked perfectly. Americans immediately wanted to learn who Natalie Harp is. Answer: a “platinum blonde geyser of positivity, there to buck him up when the going gets rough,” as the New York Times described the young aide who serves as Trump’s personal, 24/7 “security blanket.”
Ossoff has some very thick skin. The entire Trump cult got outraged quite quickly, with its leader being the most hysterical on the subject. It takes a lot of talent to yank Trump’s chain enough to be the week’s media darling. The New Republic‘s Greene piled on today. “Natalie Harp Should Concern Everyone—I Should Know, I Once Had Her Job, When I ran President Obama’s socials, I treated that work as needing checks and restraint at every point of the process. Its absence in the Trump White House is scary.”
Handling a U.S. president’s social media voice is a magisterial job. The work involved ranges far and wide—from figuring out how to handle the president’s receipt of a Nobel Peace Prize to huddling with colleagues to pull just the right clip from a speech. Or, if you’re President Donald Trump’s aide and traveling companion, Natalie Harp, you might use AI to portray the president as a fighter pilot dropping payloads of poop on No Kings demonstrators.
I know something about this particular job. I managed President Barack Obama’s partisan social media accounts over much of the first year of his presidency. It’s fair to say this was a more innocent age. The watchwords I took to the work were ones like safeguards and restraint, instead of poop jet and What if we depicted the president as Jesus Christ. A president’s statements, I knew, could move markets even if ventriloquized by twenty- and thirtysomethings working to channel the top guy’s voice. At every point, my colleagues and I took intentional steps to guard against loose words.
It hardly takes a genius to spot how the standards around Trump’s social media accounts have slipped, even against the low baseline of his first term. With The New York Timescalling Harp, Trump’s omnipresent aide, the “sylphlike woman” who “supplies him with content she fishes out of the social media gutter (like the video he posted depicting the Obamas as apes),” we have a good idea of why those standards have tumbled—and strong reason to wonder what else the woman who “texts with world leaders on the president’s behalf” and operates “entirely outside the usual chain of command” is doing with her prized, rare access.
I keep wondering if there’s more to her than a “unhealthy obsession with Trump” as her brother said in an interview a few days ago in a CNN interview. She’s been groomed by the likes of Liberty University and has had a lifelong brainwashing by her mother.
“My mom raised us that the idea of American exceptionalism was the correct way of looking at things, that the United States is the boss of the world,” Preston Harp said in the interview. “That, like, slavery was back then. That was normal. People weren’t bad because they had slaves.”
Has the Radical Xtian Right got some other plans for her or bimbo whispering him into doing things for them or Israel? (BTW, I yanked that description from cartoonist Steve Stack as well as the cartoon I shared with you today that’s his.) Those folks are all wrapped up in the idea that they get a quick flight on Sky God if Israel tears down the mosque on Temple Mount to rebuild a Temple, and they’re serious about it. Maybe there’s some deep-state intrigue there, or maybe the weirdness of the times is getting to me.
Okay, so let me go down this rabbit hole just one more time today with an exclusive from The Daily Beast. (Seriously, I’m not forgetting any of the shit he’s doing for this soap opera moment.) David Gardner has this headline. “Natalie Harp’s Intimate Letters to Trump Revealed in Full. Trump’s biographer Michael Wolff is revealing two bombshell letters Harp wrote to Trump, calling him her “Guardian and Protector.”
The extraordinary letters were written in 2023, either during or after Harp accompanied Trump on a trip to Scotland and Ireland. She was 31 and Trump was 76. They reveal Harp’s utter devotion to Trump. She even tells him she is envious of women “whose only job seems to be to talk with you and look pretty.”
“I want that job!!” she writes in the letter, saying she missed the days when he would call “and we’d talk about everything and nothing.”
“We shouldn’t have to talk about work all the time!!” she tells Trump.
Harp also refers to herself by the nickname Trump’s staff reportedly gave her: the “Human Printer,” because she printed out positive stories and reports for the president.
The two letters were handed to author and Inside Trump’s Head host Michael Wolff while he was writing his best-selling book, All or Nothing, which chronicled Trump’s 2024 campaign. It included extracts of the letters, and The New York Times later published shorter extracts from the same letters.
Asked to comment on behalf of Harp, White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded, “Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump’s team. The Fake News’s continued attacks on President Trump and his Administration prove exactly why trust in media is at historic lows. The media should get back to reporting real news and stop regurgitating Trump-Deranged liberal talking points.”
There’s a copy of that letter at the link. I’m sure Melania is happy to be relieved of the spotlight. Although the trotted her out as damage control. People Magazine has this lede yesterday. “Melania Trump Says ‘I Heard You Missed Me’ at First Public Appearance in a Month. The first lady was last seen at the FIFA World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19.” Does she really believe that?
Melania Trump acknowledged her heavily discussed absence in a recent speech.
The first lady, 56, spoke from the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, Aug. 20, highlighting her Fostering the Future initiative and plans to expand its national network, according to a White House press release. The expansion is facilitated by a $2 million donation from IndyCar and Fox Corporation, which will fund scholarships at Indiana University and Purdue University.
I really try not to be a slut slammer but sheesh, some women just ask for it. This last read is from Catherine Rampell who is now writing at The Bulwark. Since Trump loves dehumanizing women reporters, I’m waiting for him to go apeshit of this analysis. “Trump’s War on Reality Comes for the Census. One of America’s most trusted institutions just put its name on a totally bogus voter-fraud report.”
SOMEONE ASKS ME AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK whether they should still trust the federal government’s data releases. When we hear official announcements about things like unemployment or inflation, can we rely on those figures to accurately reflect reality, and to be based on proven models? Up until now, I have always said yes.
Sure, the numbers coming out of the White House may be bull.1 But the numbers from independent statistical agencies (the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, etc.) have remained solid and trustworthy, I usually explain.
After all, these stats agencies employ armies of dedicated, fastidious civil servants who collect the underlying data and conduct careful statistical analysis. Their work is firewalled from political interference. I’ve been covering these data releases long enough 2 to know that if Trump were cooking the books, it would be obvious—not least because those career civil servants would be screaming bloody murder and quitting en masse.
Unfortunately, I can no longer vouch for any of that. Now my answer is: No, you should not default to trusting the government data. There’s clear evidence the Trump administration is cooking at least some of the books.
The rest is behind a firewall but believe me, this is not good news for any one in my business. Most of my analysis in my papers come at least partially from government data. This basically means all of us are using spurious information if something is not done quickly about this. I can only ask for who knows how many times, where is Congress when we need them. I hope the courts can do a few things but seriously, this is a Congressional thing.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?
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I’m so glad that Shadow seems to have found an eagle to bond with…
BREAKING MS NOW:Trump aide Natalie Harp worked at the White House without a security clearance for more than a year.Harp declined multiple times to seek a routine security clearance normally obtained by West Wing staffers to work at the White House.
Over the past couple of days, Trump’s close companion, Natalie Harp, has suddenly become one of the top news stories in the U.S. She is even getting news coverage in the UK and Ireland.
Although she has been extremely close to Trump since his exile to Mar-a-Lago after he lost the 2020 election, she has probably only been on the radar of politics junkies like me until now.
Natalie suddenly began getting more widely noticed after she was one of 3 aides recently chosen to ride with Trump in a catering vehicle that took them to a military plane to fly them out of Turkey after the Secret Service received warnings about a possible assassination threat against Trump from Iran. Trump’s cabinet members, top aides, and the media pool were relegated to a decoy plane. I wrote about all this in my post last Wednesday.
Now, Natalie has become front page news, thanks to a throw-away remark from Sen. Jon Ossoff and an oval office meltdown from Trump. As a side-effect, Ossoff is also getting plenty of attention.
Ossoff says that Trump doesn’t want to do his job but wants to “travel with Natalie”
On Sunday, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff said something that seems to have truly pissed off Trumpworld: He gave a speech in which he dared to mention a woman in the Trump orbit named Natalie—just Natalie, no last name given.
Speaking at a campaign event—he is up for reelection in November—Ossoff said the following about Trump to a crowd: “While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks.” He went on: “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”
Who is this Natalie that Trump wants to—pause for a full-body shudder—travel with? It’s not anything so obvious as an affair, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s somehow worse. Natalie is Natalie Harp, but she’s better known as Trump’s so-called “human printer.” As an executive assistant in the White House, she follows him around with a wireless printer, supplying him with a steady flow of articles and memes about him for him to take in….Harp also sometimes posts for Trump on social media; people on his team have in fact blamed her for some of his very worst, most racist posts. She makes a salary of $150,000 doing this, by the way.
Harp has been part of Trump’s staff, and been reported on in media outlets like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, for a while now. After a stint as an anchor at One America News Network, she joined Trump’s team in 2022, when she first earned the “human printer” nickname. As that epithet might imply, she is not exactly beloved among the rest of Trump’s staff. It has been reported that those employees have tried and failed numerous times to push her out, worrying that she is a danger to herself and the president. The deal seems to be that she’s so scarily devoted to Trump that she worries her colleagues, which is saying something. But scary levels of devotion, it perhaps unsurprisingly turns out, are a register that really works for our president, and all this has paradoxically ensured her continued employment in the White House. Maybe all it takes to achieve job security in this admin is to do what Harp did and write creepy letters to Trump in which you refer to him as your “Guardian and Protector in this Life.”
If all this is public knowledge and has been for some time, one wonders why members of Trumpworld were so rattled by Ossoff’s mention of Natalie. And they were rattled: White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote a post in response that began, “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics.” Another White House staffer called Ossoff a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama.” Trump also snapped at a reporter who asked about the remarks.
The reporter was CNN’s Kristin Holmes, and Trump did more than snap at her.
Trump: "Quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet. You're very disrespectful in front of this young man, OK? Don't you find her disrespectful? He understands. Quiet. Who are you with? Reporter: "I'm with CNN." Trump: "Fake news…Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. You're a fake reporter, and you report fake news."
The White House on Monday leveled a sharply personal attack against CNN reporter Kristen Holmes after she asked President Donald Trump a pointed question during a news conference, crossing a barrier rarely breached by politicians to invoke her children.
“Jon Ossoff said you’d rather travel with your aide Natalie Harp and build the ballroom than do your job as president,” Holmes said. “What is your response?”
President Donald Trump told CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes in the Oval Office, Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet. You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news. Andrew Harnik, Getty Images
Trump answered Holmes’s question with an insult to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia), whom he called a “Pee-wee Herman look-alike,” referring to the Paul Reubens character.
Then the White House’s “rapid response” account on X took up the altercation, posting a video clip of the exchange and assailing Holmes as a “disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession.”
In a follow-up tweet, the account dipped into a more personal line of attack: “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question,” the White House wrote. “They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”
She never takes a day off, not even on Sunday. She works out of the Oval Office and she’s got a regular seat on Marine One. She texts with world leaders on the president’s behalf. She stays up late with him drafting social media posts.
She rarely speaks on camera and yet she is never not there, ever-present with a wide smile and her eyes fixed on the president.
President Donald Trump looks on as Natalie Harp, an aide, places a computer playing a news report about the stock market during a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House May 30, 2025. Francis ChungPo
She is Natalie Harp, the 35-year-old West Wing aide who is the utmost gatekeeper to President Trump, a one-woman conduit of information operating entirely outside the usual chain of command. The public’s interest in Ms. Harp exploded after she was revealed last week to be one of the lucky few who joined the president inside an airplane catering container to be whisked out of Turkey under threat of attack by Iran….
The unique power Mr. Trump affords her says much about how he functions as president.
As long as Ms. Harp is around, he enjoys an unvetted flow of information, some of it poisonous and counterproductive, at least as far as a number of his other advisers are concerned. She supplies him with content she fishes out of the social media gutter (like the video he posted depicting the Obamas as apes) and provides him with a view from the world outside official Washington, of which he has always been mistrustful. Her moniker is “the human printer,” because she tails the president with a portable printer so she can hand him information in hard copy.
She is a platinum blonde geyser of positivity, there to buck him up when the going gets rough. She believes, or at least vehemently claims to believe, that he totally won the 2020 election. In the book “Regime Change,” by the New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Mr. Trump is described as explaining to people that Ms. Harp is the only one who loves him as much as his wife and children. All his other staff will go off and make money, Mr. Trump would say, but Ms. Harp will never leave him….
In some ways, Ms. Harp is filling a role that Mr. Trump has always required, going back to his days as a real estate developer in Manhattan. Back then, there were always secretaries sitting outside his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, ready at a moment’s notice to hop to it. He referred to these women as “the girls.”
Ms. Harp collects a taxpayer-funded salary of $150,000. Her double-barreled title is special assistant to the president and executive assistant to the president. At work she can be a bit of a loner. Even in this West Wing, in which loyalty to the president seems to know no bounds, Ms. Harp’s displays of devotion have unnerved some of her colleagues.
Several videos shared with The Times show Ms. Harp sprinting across great distances to keep up with Mr. Trump’s golf cart as it putters across his course in Scotland. “I also am sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland,” she wrote in a letter to the president that was viewed by The Times.
The letter goes on to say: “I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).”
The letter concludes: “With all my heart, Natalie.”
It was October 2023, and Donald Trump was due at a New York City courthouse to fight his latest set of legal troubles. But as the motorcade idled outside his Trump Tower residence, staffers confronted a more immediate problem: There wasn’t room for Harp, the hyper-loyal aide whose devotion to Trump had quickly entrenched her within his orbit.
A screaming match in the lobby ensued, with Harp insisting that Trump had personally asked her to attend the court appearance, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Denied a seat but determined not to be left behind, Harp jumped into an SUV trunk, according to the two sources and confirmed by a photo obtained by CNN.
The episode, which has not been previously reported, served as an encapsulation of the role Harp has carved out in recent years as a constant and intensely dedicated presence at Trump’s side. Her methods have irked senior aides and at times prompted efforts to box her out of the president’s inner circle, according to multiple sources who described the dynamic to CNN.
A former right-wing television host, who began working for Trump after crediting him with saving her life, Harp has become a main conduit between the president and the outside world, passing along messages from allies and setting up meetings, tapping out Truth Social posts and toting printouts of laudatory articles, all while staying in close physical proximity at all hours of the day.
“[Trump] likes the attention and the fact that she is 100% committed and loyal,” one White House adviser told CNN. “She doesn’t second guess, doesn’t question.” [….]
Harp’s rapid rise within Trump world has stood out in large part because of the intensity of her dedication to the president since joining his staff in 2022. Despite having no formal title on Trump’s reelection campaign, Harp trailed him across the country, feeding him positive stories, social media posts and other correspondence so frequently that allies dubbed her the “human printer.”
Illustrating how she’s become indispensable to Trump, one Republican lawmaker noted that while they occasionally reach out to the president directly, they always make sure Harp is aware.
“She always responds. I don’t know how she manages it all,” the source said, adding that in addition to relaying messages to Trump, Harp often personally sends lawmakers articles or notes on the president’s behalf.
There’s quite a bit more at the CNN link.
So… is this just a silly story that doesn’t deserve so much attention? I don’t think so. this women is closer to Trump than his chief of staff Susie Wiles. She is with him at all times, even on the golf course and late at night when she’s helping him post on Truth Social. She even went with him to a dignified transfer of fallen troops. It’s about time she had the spotlight on her and whatever she’s up to.
Until now, Natalie Harp was known only to Washington insiders and people weird enough to read insidery books about the administration. But Harp has officially escaped containment.
She is about to be a full-fledged character in the dramedy of the Trump White House, discussed in the news and recognized by ordinary people. And while the White House and its allies are pretending to be outraged about that fact, it’s completely appropriate and long overdue. There is literally no single person who spends as much time at the side of the president of the United States as her; the idea that it should somehow be off-limits to discuss her role is bonkers….
Waldman recounts Jon Ossoff’s comments and notes the episode in Turkey when Harp accompanied Trump and two other aides in a catering truck.
Harp, whose job seems to consist of 1) following Trump around with a portable printer so she can produce paper copies of articles that praise him, tweets that praise him, and anything else that praises him, making him feel that everything is going great and everyone loves him, which has led her to be dubbed the “Human Printer”; and 2) typing up the Truth Social posts he dictates.
Harp with Trump on the golf course.
If there’s more to her job than that, it’s basically to make Trump feel good at all times; she’s his emotional support aide. Those occasional cabinet meetings in which everyone tells Trump how blessed and honored they are to be working in his service aren’t enough; he needs that validation on 24-7 IV drip, and that’s what Natalie Harp provides.
She’s with Trump whether he’s in the White House, travelling to a foreign country, or golfing at one of his clubs, a proximity that has apparently caused a good deal of unease among his other staffers. As Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report in their book Regime Change, “Trump had taken to telling his staff that Natalie (or ‘Nathalie,’ as he would call her, using a French pronunciation) was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids. ‘All of you will go off and make money,’ he would say. ‘She’ll never leave me.’”
Harp is neither a Svengali nor a Rasputin, but in this White House, she’s an incredibly important figure. She is the most important channel through which he receives and distributes information, and because Trump is impulsive, mercurial, and has the emotional regulation of a toddler, the person most responsible for determining his psychological state is central to the work of the administration.
Read the rest at the link. It’s pretty scary that this obviously troubled young women has so much power in the Trump White House.
Meanwhile, Trump supposedly has a First Lady, but she seems to have disappeared. I wonder how Melania feels about Natalie?
First lady Melania Trump has not been seen in exactly one month, marking one of the longest stretches that she has been absent from the public eye in her husband’s second term.
Melania, 56, was last seen at her husband President Donald Trump’s side as they attended the FIFA World Cup Final in New Jersey on July 19, one month ago. She has not been seen in public since that outing, a Daily Beast analysis can reveal.
So far, she has been seen in public on just 38 days this year. The first lady has shown her face at an average rate of once every six days in 2026.
In the last month, there have been several high-profile events that she did not attend with her husband. She did not accompany him to the dignified transfer of U.S. soldiers killed by Iran on July 22, nor the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24. She also did not attend the funeral for Sen. Lindsey Graham on July 28.
In August, she did not appear to accompany her husband to any of his leisure activities either, including his back-to-back weekends spent golfing at his Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey.
Her absence in the last four weeks comes as the Daily Beast’s analysis has additionally found that her public appearances have shrunk significantly this summer. She appeared in public just five times in June and July, two of which were to attend sporting events, which works out to one appearance approximately every 12 days.
With the fate of his ballroom tied up in court, President Trump is racing against the clock.
He has enlisted a team of 250 workers to push ahead with construction 20 hours a day, seven days a week to complete as much work as quickly as possible. This week, there are plans to install one million pounds of rebar and pour 3,000 cubic yards of concrete for a project that is now two-thirds complete, the administration said in a court filing.
Trump’s ballroom under construction
Now, with the matter pending before the Supreme Court, the Trump administration is making a practical appeal to the justices: The ballroom is simply too far along to be stopped now.
“His strategy clearly is to change the reality on the ground so that instead of preserving the status quo, those who rightly invoke the law against what he’s doing are put in a position of having to undo something that is already a fait accompli,” said Laurence H. Tribe, an emeritus university professor of constitutional law at Harvard.
For years, Mr. Trump has argued that the White House should have its own ballroom, saying it was a matter of prestige on the world stage. A ballroom, he said, would allow officials to hold big events for special guests without needing to erect a tent on the South Lawn.
In recent months, as preservationists and other critics have tried to halt or at least slow down the project, Mr. Trump has offered a new justification: national security. Essentially, Mr. Trump is treating the ballroom and the military bunker underneath it as one and the same.
The bunker — officially known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC — was built during World War II beneath what was once the East Wing, which Mr. Trump tore down last year to make way for his ballroom.
Now, he speaks about the two projects in the same breath.
Read more using the gift link, if you’re interested.
The Treasury Department has seen a dramatic exodus of President Donald Trump’s own appointees, outpacing the turnover of any other recent administration.
Since the start of the second Trump administration, seven of 16 Treasury appointees confirmed by the Senate — or roughly 44% — have either quit or been pushed out of their positions, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan watchdog. That does not account for the turnover in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s office; he has had at least three different chiefs of staff since the beginning of the administration.
At least four of the seven top Treasury officials left after disagreements with the White House over demands to stretch, if not violate, tax law. Those disputes included Treasury resistance to a controversial push to use taxpayer data as part of the administration’s immigration crackdown, as well as the president’s push to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate allies as part of a deal with the IRS to drop any past or future tax audits of the president and his family. (The “anti-weaponization” fund was later dropped due to resistance from Senate Republicans.)
“They’re asking them to do stuff that is well beyond the norm, and for some things that may or may not be legal,” said Mark Mazur, who held senior positions at the IRS under both parties and was acting assistant secretary for tax policy in Biden’s Treasury Department. “A lot of these people expect to have a career after this administration, and being disbarred would be a bad thing for them.”
It’s time to familiarize yourselves with the names “Operation Puppet Master” and “Operation Keyhole.” If those nefarious phrases evoke to you the U.S. government’s domestic spying on leftist groups in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s for good reason. The terms are coinages of today’s Department of Homeland Security, and they’re associated with a massive covert surveillance effort that DHS unleashed earlier this year to track anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests in Minneapolis, where Donald Trump’s violent paramilitary invasion triggered months of intense civil conflict.
We just learned about the broad outlines of this domestic surveillance from newly released court papers related to the ongoing prosecution of a handful of protesters. As The New York Timesreported, the papers show that DHS began surveilling left-leaning groups—including a union, a climate change group, and others—after ICE killed Alex Pretti in January. This has entailed seeking financial records and infiltrating protest meetings that are protected by the First Amendment.
But you can get a far more vivid picture of these undercover surveillance operations—and how brazenly they were conducted against American citizens—if you read deep into the court papers. The documents—which are attached as exhibits to a motion filed by lawyers for one of the protesters facing prosecution and are available on Pacer—include investigative reports that were transmitted by the undercover agents themselves about meetings they infiltrated.
It’s jarring, revealing stuff. The reports show that covert agents surreptitiously attended well over a dozen protest meetings organized by groups like the Sunrise Movement and various small socialist organizations. In some cases the agents secretly recorded the gatherings.
Read more TNR.
That’s all I have for today. What other stories are you following?
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Ossoff has some very thick skin. The entire Trump cult got outraged quite quickly, with its leader being the most hysterical on the subject. It takes a lot of talent to yank Trump’s chain enough to be the week’s media darling. 
I keep wondering if there’s more to her than a “unhealthy obsession with Trump” as her brother said in an interview a few days ago in a 
Okay, so let me go down this rabbit hole just one more time today with an exclusive from
There’s a copy of that letter at the link. I’m sure Melania is happy to be relieved of the spotlight. Although the trotted her out as damage control. People Magazine has this lede yesterday. “Melania Trump Says ‘I Heard You Missed Me’ at First Public Appearance in a Month. The first lady was last seen at the FIFA World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19.” Does she really believe that?
