The Orange Menace, who has notably been sued by women over alleged "affairs" during his current marriage, gave his bag carrier a good once-over and then described her as a "perfect person," where perfect seems to mean her legs.
While musing over television vehicles for Natalie, Diaper Don also offered up Los Angeles and San Diego to Iran as targets for retribution. — Read the rest
For more than a year, journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan had been trying — and largely failing — to raise awareness about the very strange story of Donald Trump and his aide Natalie Harp. Shortly after the 2024 election, the New York Times journalists published a profile of the lithe blonde in her early 30s, complete with photos of her gazing at Trump adoringly, explaining how she left him love letters with language like, “You are all that matters to me.” On Aug. 16, Haberman was still trying to raise the issue during an appearance on MS NOW, describing Harp as Trump’s “human binky.”
But in the end, it was Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who woke up much of the public to this disturbing relationship by mentioning Harp on the campaign trail. “He doesn’t want to do the job,” the senator said of Trump, the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
The defensive reaction from the White House was so over-the-top that it backfired, drawing more attention to the relationship.
But a mystery remained. Haberman, Swan and many others had been talking about Harp, but it wasn’t until Ossoff said something that the White House truly lost their minds.
The reaction likely had little to do with Ossoff’s comments, as elegantly as they were constructed. No, this recoil was more about the messenger than the message. At 39, Ossoff isn’t just young. He is strikingly handsome. The boyish good looks of his early career have matured into something closer to the old-fashioned allure of a 1960s-era movie star, such as Gregory Peck or Warren Beatty. Broad-chested, with great hair and a winning smile, Ossoff has a cool demeanor, good sense of humor and moral seriousness in a proportion that’s rare in politics — and that hasn’t really been seen since Barack Obama. Ossoff, in other words, can get it.
I’m talking about votes.
Put another way, Ossoff is everything the 80-year-old president wishes he were, but isn’t. Harp’s presence is a touchy, daily reminder to both Trump and his staff of the president’s thick catalog failings as a human being. Having a young, handsome, talented man mock Trump for his emotional support aide had to have stung with a special precision. No one needs to tell the president or his staff that Ossoff feels just fine about himself — and doesn’t need a full-time emotional support aide to follow him around, praising his every move.
Considering how much the White House communications staff is extremely online, they are also likely to know that Ossoff has become quite the thirst trap, even among young women and gay men who otherwise aren’t especially political on social media. As Grace Panetta of The 19th recently explained, the senator is a reliable, if unwitting, model for light-hearted crush content, much like what creators generate in tribute to movie stars like Timothée Chalamet or Tom Holland.
“Take a scroll through Instagram and TikTok, and you’ll see fan edit-style videos of Ossoff at campaign rallies and in Senate hearings,” Panetta wrote. Women jokingly call out Ossoff’s “slutty Atticus Finch cosplay” or predict that Ossoff will be “a hot president in my lifetime.” It’s reached the point where a reporter from TMZ asked Ossoff if he has “BDE,” which is not short for Big Dictionary Energy, despite the senator very much seeming like he’d be a fan of Oxford’s quintessential publication.
Ossoff’s sex appeal doesn’t just offer a striking contrast with Trump’s oversized suits and comical combover. He’s also very different than men in the Republican ranks who are closer to his own age and, like himself, are widely seen as potential 2028 presidential candidates. At 42, Vice President JD Vance is also the subject a lot of online content. But most of it portrays him in a comically unflattering manner, with tiny dead eyes, oversized cheeks and a maniacal grin. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 55, isn’t mocked for his looks, but he is often portrayed as a sad sack, a man too slow-witted and spineless to be much use beyond his role as Trump’s patsy. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, 46, is blessed with good looks that even three breakfast gin-and-tonics can’t take away. But with the help of Colin Jost on “Saturday Night Live,” he is mostly viewed like an overgrown frat boy crushing beer cans on his forehead. None come even close to the dreamboat treatment Ossoff receives.
This disparate treatment is especially amusing because the MAGA movement has insisted for years that they are bringing back a more virile masculinity — supposedly to cure all the allegedly poisonous feminism inflicted upon America by those WNBA-loving Democrats. No doubt there are some people impressed by all the workout videos posted by MAGA leaders, though that audience probably doesn’t have much crossover with people who get second dates. But what all the chest-thumping and push-up contests of the right really communicates is overcompensation rather than reclaiming some “lost” masculinity.
Beneath the right’s meltdown over Ossoff’s relatively tame comment about Harp was a molten layer of male insecurity. Steven Cheung, the volatile White House communications director, tweeted, “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics.” White House spokesman David Ingle called the senator a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid.” Both unwisely lobbed these insults from X accounts featuring photos of themselves. The handy comparison left the observer to contemplate how, with MAGA, it’s typically true that every accusation is itself a confession. Similarly, Trump compared Ossoff to Pee-wee Herman, a reference to a film that is older than the senator and only served to underscore how old and out of touch the president is.
MAGA’s belief that masculinity is on the decline is more a reflection of their personal fears and resentments than an accurate picture of the world. Men who can just act normal continue to do fine, or as much as one can in this economy. As with many of the thirst-trap Democrats that are rising stars, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate hopeful Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a large part of Ossoff’s charm is that he possesses an easy masculinity, one comfortable with women’s equality. MAGA influencers may deny it, but men who actually like and respect women tend to be more attractive to women and gay men.
Being chill with women’s power projects confidence. Insecure men are the ones who demand that women are forced into subservient roles, just so men can feel bigger. It speaks to an internal belief that they can’t win without cheating. That’s loser energy, not the Big Dictionary Energy being given off by Ossoff and this new crop of young, vigorous Democratic men.
“Saturday Night Live” kicked off its 52nd season with a familiar Donald Trump impression, an increasingly familiar presidential friendship and a brand-new character: White House aide Natalie Harp.
The season premiere opened Saturday with Ramy Youssef reprising his role as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, delivering an update on the nor’easter battering the East Coast before James Austin Johnson’s Trump arrived unexpectedly.
“For some reason that no one can figure out, I really, really like you,” Johnson’s Trump told Mamdani, poking fun at the unlikely rapport between the president and the democratic socialist mayor.
But it was cast member Ashley Padilla’s debut as Harp that quickly stole the sketch.
A rain-soaked Harp burst into the room after supposedly running all the way from Washington, D.C., “Weapons-style,” a reference to the 2025 horror film. Johnson’s Trump then compared his devoted aide to a character from another horror movie.
“She’s like the girl from ‘Obsession’ but blond,” he said.
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Padilla’s Harp responded. “I’m totally normal.”
She then pulled Mamdani close and issued a warning about Trump: “If you hurt him, I will end you.”
Harp, a longtime Trump aide sometimes nicknamed the “human printer” for providing the president with a steady stream of printed news articles and social media posts, has drawn renewed attention over her unusually close relationship with Trump. Reports this summer revealed intensely personal letters Harp sent Trump in 2023, including one telling him, “You are all that matters to me.”
SNL isn’t the only late-night show to turn Harp into a character.
Just two nights earlier, Jimmy Kimmel introduced his own clingy “assistant Natalie,” played by his wife and the show’s executive producer, Molly McNearney. The character hovered beside Kimmel during his Thursday monologue and offered to handle everything from his social media posts to his personal needs.
The back-to-back parodies mark a sudden pop-culture turn for a White House aide who has largely operated outside the spotlight.
SNL, meanwhile, returned just weeks ahead of the midterm elections with politics firmly back in its repertoire. The premiere also took shots at the Trump administration’s fight with the press, the president’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his use of artificial intelligence during its “Weekend Update” segment.
The episode was hosted by New York Knicks captain Jalen Brunson, with KATSEYE as musical guest.
Blame Natalie Harp. On Friday, seemingly out of nowhere, Donald Trump banned CNN, POLITICO and MS NOW from the White House after whining for the umpteenth time about “Fake News,” his decade-long catchphrase to demonize accurate but unflattering press coverage. (It remains unclear if the president, whose paternal grandfather was from Germany, knows the term is an English translation of the infamous Nazi term “lügenpresse.”) Trump has been complaining about the media’s insufficient reverence for him throughout his entire political career, but there seems to be no precipitating cause for this particular tantrum. To the contrary, POLITICO reported that “senior staff were surprised by the directive, which happened while chief of staff Susie Wiles was out of town.”
“You get sick of it,” was all Trump would offer in the way of explanation for his media ban.
Soon, though, reports showed that it was likely a response to provocations from Trump’s aide, Natalie Harp. “Aide” is probably too generous a word for Harp’s job, which is reportedly to follow the president around and attempt to soothe him with an endless barrage of flattery from herself and with print-outs of his followers saying nice things about him online. Even though she recently wrote “I never want to bring you anything but joy” to the man she she calls her “Guardian and Protector,” it appears Harp is actually quite comfortable showing Trump materials guaranteed to hurt his notoriously fragile ego.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Harp “showed him clips of anchors on the cable network MS NOW criticizing his administration” on Friday, which sent the agitated president into “a fever pitch.” CNN followed up with a report that she also provided him with clips from CNN and POLITICO, resulting in a rage from Trump that led to an impulsive ban of the three outlets.
Harp became famous earlier this summer, when Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., mentioned in a campaign speech that Trump would rather “travel with Natalie” on the new Air Force One than do his job as president. The White House responded with a five-alarm overreaction, a move that only served to draw more attention to his relationship with a woman that New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman has described as Trump’s “human binky.” At first, the relationship was mostly the source of mockery that someone of the his stature apparently needs a full-time ego masseuse who often totes around enormous bags, which have generated speculation about their contents. (Some have connected them, with no concrete evidence, to the strange shape of the president’s prominent posterior.)
This new wrinkle in the Harp story, though, suggests that she’s not just a human Band-Aid for Trump’s insecurities — she is actively dangerous. It’s unclear why she apparently showed the president clips that were guaranteed to anger him, but the result is that he launched the most serious assault in his ongoing war on the free press and the First Amendment. The episode shows that Harp isn’t just there to flatter and soothe Trump; she is also willing to get him worked up so that his terrible decision-making skills deteriorate even further.
This move works out very nicely for Harp; it will almost certainly make Trump more dependent on her. She’s setting up a contrast for the praise-hungry Trump, between the “nasty” media that says stuff that offends his ego and what she has on offer as a lithe blonde exalting his magnificence. Plus, having had his feelings hurt by the press coverage, he’ll be even more eager for her services as a professional ego-fluffer.
As his press ban shows, Trump’s sense of entitlement and demands for adulation are getting worse, making him more prone to lash out at those he feels show insufficient deference.
The situation is potentially dangerous for the country. As his press ban shows, Trump’s sense of entitlement and demands for adulation are getting worse, making him more prone to lash out at those he feels show insufficient deference. He also seems to feel less constrained by the law in exerting his power to punish those who aren’t sufficiently compliant, an attitude that goes beyond his outrage at the media. For months, Trump has been illegally withholding federal funds to states that didn’t vote for him.
The president’s addiction to flattery has always made him vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors. But this appears to have increased during his second term. Nowhere is this more obvious than with his war in Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hawkish Republicans, led by the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, spent years trying to lure the U.S. into a war with the Islamic Republic. They were unsuccessful, never quite able to persuade past presidents, including Trump in his first term, to ignore the military experts warning against taking action. But in February, Graham finally managed to get Trump over the line, appealing to his vanity by shamelessly comparing him to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This time, Trump’s demand for nothing but fawning coverage backfired. The major networks that comprise the White House press pool, including Fox News, responded to the media ban with a boycott. “Mr. Trump, for whom television is better than any narcotic, finds himself for the first time at least partially deprived of the major networks that have covered nearly every movement and utterance he has made for more than a decade,” wrote Peter Baker of the New York Times.
Deprived of his attention fix, the president visited New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion on Monday, crowing, “They never boycott me” and “Look at all that press,” ignoring the fact that they were there at the invitation of the popular Mamdani and not himself. In reality, the boycott has already resulted in one major humiliation for Trump. The president’s comments were inaudible during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for his vaunted South Lawn helipad because his streaming team couldn’t get the sound working in the absence of CNN.
Now the White House is attempting to salve the president’s wounded ego by launching “Trump TV,” which appears to be nothing more than a hasty rebranding of the existing in-house video team that livestreams events on social media. This is unlikely to quell Trump’s angst over losing the media coverage he himself banned, especially since the White House livestreams have already given his team headaches in the person of Aaron Rupar, the independent journalist who seizes opportunities to grab unflattering shots of the presidential backside.
Trump very obviously craves the validation that can only come from getting attention from major media outlets. While he may have a professional enabler in Harp, nothing can beat the narcissistic fix of national cable news coverage. Even she probably can’t keep him from soon rescinding the ban and recovering his access to those sweet, sweet cameras.
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from Amanda Marcotte about the Trump administration
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