SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2026
Citizen Heilemann, please! Should Natalie Harp be subject to ridicule? On balance, we'd say no.
That said, we told you the ridicule was going to come. Starting yesterday afternoon, here's a sample, from Mediaite alone:
Natalie Harp Seen Running Behind Trump’s Golf Cart in Newly Unearthed Photo
(For full report, click here.)
Natalie Harp Once Claimed Trump Saved Her Life in Bizarre Resurfaced Clip
(For full report, click here.)
FLASHBACK: Natalie Harp’s Election-Denial Interview With Karoline Leavitt Resurfaces
(For full report, click here.)
Maggie Haberman Describes Natalie Harp as Trump’s ‘Binkie’
(For full report, click here.)
All of a sudden, a lot of material is being resurfaced (unearthed). Harp's conduct is framed as "bizarre," and she's described as a "binkie."
In that FLASHBACK report, readers learned that Harp told Leavitt that the 2020 election was fixed. Our questions:
Is there anyone in MAGA World who hasn't advanced such unfounded claims?
Also, when did major orgs like the New York Times ever devote appropriate focus and space to the widespread existence of crazy claims made by the president himself?
We Blues! Our stars are afraid of the sitting president (and of the Fox News Channel). On the other hand, we do enjoy mocking "the girl," just as it ever was.
Is some such gender politics involved in the ridicule being directed at Harp? Consider what Maggie Haberman said on CNN, as reported within that "Trump's binkie" dispatch.
Haberman has done tons of outstanding work during the endless Trump years. With respect to that "binkie" remark, this is what she said:
I described her the other day as, you know, a binkie, for lack of a better way of putting it—a comfort blanket. There are men who have played that role for him too. One of them would be Boris Epstein, about whom—you know, he is legal adviser—of whom the president describes him as his psychiatrist and says sometimes you just want somebody to tell you everything is going to be okay. That is a lot of what the president values.
For lack of a better way of putting it? To our ear, Haberman—she's done tons of good work—was possibly trying to slide away from an earlier unfortunate comment. (Everyone makes mistakes.)
Possibly trying to slide away from an earlier gendered remark, she offered Boris Epstein as a male example of what she was talking about. We'll assume that she has never referred to him as a binkie—and you can be sure that, if someone ever did, no one would notice or care.
(Epstein remains almost wholly unknown. Harp is becoming quite famous.)
With respect to going after "the girl," the most remarkable statement of all came early on, from a journalist who has been widely and correctly praised for her work on the Jeffrey Epstein matter. Good grief! Senator Ossoff delivered a speech, and Julie K. Brown said this:
Award-Winning Epstein Reporter Brands Natalie Harp the ‘Side Piece’ of Trump
Celebrated journalist Julie K. Brown joined the gang of critics bashing President Donald Trump’s aide Natalie Harp on Wednesday by branding her the president’s “side piece.”
Brown—who won a series of awards for her reporting on dead sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein in The Miami Herald—made the accusation on X.
[...]
“None of these people defending Trump’s side piece seemed to have any issue with Trump calling female reporters ‘piggy’ and ‘hag,'” Brown posted.
Her accusation stands out, considering Brown is one of the more acclaimed journalists in America.
And so on from there. Brown—a fully justified feminist / humanist hero—described Harp as Trump's "side piece." Dear friends, riddle us this:
His side piece of what?
(Everyone makes mistakes.)
Yesterday morning, John Heilemann swore, on Morning Joe, that Senator Ossoff wasn't making this same insinuation when he spoke in Atlanta last Sunday. He misquoted Ossoff's words as a way of proving his point.
Please don't make us waste our time reviewing what Heilemann unwisely said. For the record, though, Ossoff has established himself as a genuine master of stinging rhetoric. In our view, his brilliantly crafted insinuation was blindingly obvious that day.
Based on a mountain of reported evidence, Natalie Harp seems to have extremely limited judgment. We'll admit that we sympathize with the person who lost her father the way she did, after her trial by bone cancer.
She seems to have extremely limited judgment. That's grotesquely true of the president himself, but our Blue American tribunes are unwilling to say what they surely must know about him—and we do enjoy mocking "the girl."
European literature began with a story of subjugation. The impulse has never left, and we Blues aren't always sharp enough to understand who we sometimes are.
Monday: The rage of Steven Cheung
What the senator said: As many people have noted, Senator Ossoff has established himself as a genuine master of stinging rhetoric. It's a remarkably powerful tool. This is what he said:
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.
That's astoundingly skillful rhetoric. For the record, we aren't even saying it's morally wrong.
That said, Walt Nauta snuck away on the catering truck too. Do the lovebirds share "their palace" with him?
Within the boundaries of that rhetoric, we think you can see that they don't!
ReplyDeleteYour Dumbocrat media and your Dumbocrat politicians are catering to your fellow Dumbocrat followers: retarded cat-ladies. Spreading dumb gossips.
It is what it is; nothing surprising here...
What kind of life don't you have that you make it a point to be the first poster, and your posts are childish, repetitive trolls? I'm saying this in an attempt to help you, because you need it.
DeleteNatalie, does Trump make you get up early in order to comment here on his behalf? That is clearly a bridge too far and you should object. Even a "binkie" deserves to sleep in on the weekend.
Delete"We Blues! Our stars are afraid of the sitting president (and of the Fox News Channel). On the other hand, we do enjoy mocking "the girl," just as it ever was."
ReplyDeleteDid Ossof sound afraid of Trump when he criticized him for his failure to do his job as president? He itemized his failures. Ossof did not mock "the girl" (who is 35 years old) but included her in the list of distractions Trump uses to avoid doing the work as president.
Is some "gender politics" involved in referring to Natalie Harp as "the girl," as Somerby does today, quoting no one else? And hasn't Natalie Harp made herself sound ridiculous with the "love letters" she has written to Trump? And who exactly released those letters to the public? We suspect Trump, as a form of narcissistic bragging, since they were in his possession and were given to Trump's official biographer. What man gives away love letters written to him if he cares about the woman who wrote them?
But Somerby blames the press. And Somerby ignores the national security aspects of this woman sitting in on classified meetings without a security clearance, at the highest levels of Trump's presidency. And Somerby doesn't care about what her "job" says about Trump's health and sanity. He just wants to beat up on blue America and pretend that no blue politicians have ever criticized Trump, because they are all too scared of Trump to criticize him directly. The truth is that Trump is everyone's punching bag.
"In that FLASHBACK report, readers learned that Harp told Leavitt that the 2020 election was fixed. Our questions:
ReplyDeleteIs there anyone in MAGA World who hasn't advanced such unfounded claims?"
If everyone in MAGA says it, it's OK when she does? Everyone in MAGA parrots everything Trump says. Does that sanitize the ENORMOUS volume of vile, foolish shit that pours from his mouth, and by extension, of all MAGA's mouths? Someone -- EXTREMELY -- close to the person who is trying to dismantle democracy in large part based on this lie, is amplifying it, but it should just be ignored?
Let's dispatch with the fake "we don't knows" Somerby likes to pussyfoot around with. She's there because she's a youngish, good looking woman who bears a resemblance to Trump's daughter -- a daughter about whom he's said some extraordinarily creepy things. She isn't some kind of victim of sexism -- in fact, to whatever degree being in close proximity to Trump is some kind of achievement, she got it EXACTLY because she's a woman. She is not a victim. She's a willing enabler and cheerleader of the chief perpetrator.
"Based on a mountain of reported evidence, Natalie Harp seems to have extremely limited judgment."
ReplyDeleteSomerby fails to consider that she might have been put up to her involvement with Trump, reporting back to a handler, encouraged to plant ideas and direct Trump's memes and statements for the benefit of someone besides herself. That is one possibility.
Another possibility is that she is yet another person currying favor with Trump for their own benefit. It is not unusual to have a young female nurse or attendant or companion who worms her way into the life of an elderly senile man in order to wind up in his will. That is an obvious interpretation of this scenario.
It is not likely that a woman of Harp's age would become enamored of Trump to the point of debasing herself every day in his service without any ulterior motive, unless she were mentally ill herself. This is not a "love" relationship because Trump is a married man and he is not capable of loving anyone but himself. So the surface explanation is not possible. The Secret Service should have stopped this at the beginning and figured out what is going on with her. She is a threat to the president, and thus to our nation.
It makes no difference when her father died and whether or not she had bone cancer. None of that explains what is happening with the president. It is not a cause of her behavior or any adult's behavior toward her. And much of what she has claimed was a lie.
If Somerby gives this any credence, he too is showing "poor judgment" which is not itself an explanation either. Somerby needs to stop trying to normalize what is going on and call for an investigation and for Harp's immediate removal from her proximity to our demented president.
There is no info available about any prior romantic relationship between Natalie Harp and anyone else, going back to high school. Why the secrecy? It was easy to find out who Mary Trump and Maggie Haberman are with.
DeleteMaybe Natalie Harp is a virgin.
DeleteMaybe she is autistic.
Delete“we aren't even saying it's morally wrong.”
ReplyDeleteJust yesterday, Somerby accused “blues” of having no compassion for Harp, who supposedly lost her father at 28. That sounds like a moral judgment.
Today, he argues that Ossoff is clearly insinuating that Natalie is a “side piece”, to use someone else’s description of harp, made after Ossoff’s speech. Heileman is clueless to argue otherwise, says Somerby.
But, hey, Somerby isn’t even saying it’s morally wrong. He did characterize it as an “angry” insinuation though.
The only folks who do morally wrong things are us blues. The right can do no wrong. It would violate Somerby's contract to say anything Trump does is wrong.
DeleteSomerby points out that Walt Nauta also snuck away, but does he run after Trump's golf cart or sleep in a locker room (for a month) just to be close to him should he call? Does Nauta write him long self-confessing love letters begging for Trump's forgiveness for existing in his imperfect self? Do Walt Nauta have access to Trump's Truth Social account at all hours of the night, visiting him in his bedroom? No, Nauta just brings him diet cokes.
ReplyDeleteAt the very least, Trump is taking advantage of a disturbed woman for his own purposes. That is wrong to do. Somerby's pretense that this must be sexism is silly. That is his attempt to normalize this situation by suggesting it has some equivalent in sexual politics, when the only one would be the kind of sex slave who is locked away in a basement so that a predator can torture her at his leisure. There is no normal relationship, sexual or otherwise, that rests on Natalie Harp's sort of self-abasement. It is a symptom of Trump's illness that he lets her do this stuff, and Harp's letters imply that it is reciprocated, that they talk for hours about anything and everything, that he reassures her of her sufficiency. If so, that is majorly inappropriate, a manipulation of Trump that compromises him as president, and at the very least, something Melania should never have tolerated (if she cared at all about Trump). And it is a scandal, not sexism, but elder abuse because of the disparity in their ages and the compromise of Trump as president.
Somerby's attempt to reframe this as something innocent, including sexism, is a right wing talking point.
Stormy Daniels found talking to Trump boring, empty. Is Natalie Harp perhaps mentally retarded? That would explain a lot. But her former job as a right wing newsreader suggests she is scheming not schemed-upon. In that sense, she is a symbol of the prostration of the entire Republican party at Trump's feet, to do his bidding no matter what he asks of them. She is JD and Marco and all of the others, except that she has a more limited skill set. This is disgusting.
DeleteSomerby probably finds it romantic because of the disparity in their ages. Trump perhaps finds the wielding of power over this young woman to be the most satisfying element, which is sexist because it makes him appear virile (which he is not) but also gratifying. But perhaps he takes having his own way all the time, waited upon by adoring females, for granted, as his right as "king". No one knows but Natalie. Maybe she'll write a memoir.
Trump is virile.
DeleteHe’s virile minus the “ri”.
DeleteThe rumor that I had seen floating around was that Harp was changing Trump’s diaper, not that she was his “side piece.” Somerby conveniently ignores that.
ReplyDeleteMy friend lost her mother to suicide when my friend was 13. She doesn’t ask for any special kindness or compassion, and she didn’t become a Trump worshiping magat posting cruel and destructive things on the president’s social media account.
ReplyDeleteMany women get treated for breast cancer at her age. I've also met men treated for bone cancer. They don't cope by getting weird, but Harp's brother suggests she has always been conservative, leading to their estrangement over political beliefs. He blames their mother's indoctrination of them as children.
DeleteFew women get treated for breast cancer at the age of 13.
DeleteThat's one of the reasons the Democratic Party became so unpopular, with a majority of Americans now looking at them unfavorably.
DeleteYou seem to think people base what they like and dislike on facts rather than feels. The country is in a shitty place getting shittier, and people are unhappy about everything. As a result, they BLAME everything -- except themselves, which is where the problem truly lies.
DeleteGive the republicans their due, 12:13. They are at best equally unpopular.
DeleteSomewhere Reggie Love is laughing the last laugh.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
DeleteHe was the target of similar ridicule when he served as Obama's "body man." The right wing, as is its wont, ginned up a mini-furor about him. Some of the nutjobbiest ones claimed he was Obama's gay lover, while his very existence was somehow evidence that Obama was unmanly, because what kind of REAL man would have an aide who does manual tasks, like carry luggage and the sort? Now, the tables have more than turned, and they are outraged that anyone would dare question Trump's relationship with this half-crazed sycophant.
DeleteWow, I hadn’t remembered that, or maybe hadn’t heard about it.
DeleteThe fictional president on The West Wing had a "body man" and that was long before Obama was elected, 1999. I'll bet Melania has a ladie's maid to help her with personal chores, perhaps called something else.
Delete"SATURDAY: Did Ossoff float an insinuation?"
ReplyDeleteOssof came right out and said that Trump was not doing the job of president, then he listed what Trump has been doing instead, including golfing and building that ballroom. Why would he "insinuate" after baldly stating his opinion of Trump's performance?
He said Trump would rather "travel with Natalie" than do the work as president. It is obviously true to anyone paying attention. He didn't accuse Natalie or Trump of anything else. The smut is in Somerby's ears, if he heard an insinuation. But given the context of Trump's age and health, sexual adventure is the least likely thing to read into Ossof's remark.
Then Somerby blames the left for having a dirty, perhaps sexist, mind. Where does sexism come into this? Does Somerby think no one can imagine that Harp does clerical tasks because that isn't part of the stereotype of women's work? Or is it the love letters that Somerby thinks are sexist insinuations, evidence that Harp's job may not be on the up-and-up?
There is no sexism needed to explain this situation. Harp resembles Ivanka, who Trump himself previously said he would be "dating" if she weren't his daughter. Harp is fulfilling one of Trump's fantasies in order to exert influence over him. Ossof didn't say that and he didn't insinuate it either -- he said Trump likes to travel with Natalie. But it seems pretty obvious to the rest of us. The main question is how and why those surrounding Trump allowed her to get that close to him, and what other function she is serving. Even if all she does is calm him down when he becomes irate, who benefits from that? Is this to support the coverup of Trump's dementia? Is it to perpetuate the lie that Trump is functioning and running the govt himself? Who is behind this? Miller comes to mind.
But Somerby says Ossof insinuated something that he didn't, while refusing to speculate about the other worrisome possibilities. Somerby apparently lacks imagination or he just wants to repeat his Republican happy talk about Trump's virility while knocking Blue America.
Mariam-Webster doesn’t know the word “binkie” but it says “binky” is used for a child’s pacifier.
ReplyDeleteThe comfort object is most often a security blanket called a blankie (a crib quilt) or a stuffed toy called a lovey, used by toddlers and preschoolers. The binky is a teething object used to help an infant stop crying in inconvenient situations and to circumvent thumb-sucking at night so it won't develop as a habit (bad for teeth).
DeleteIt’s just strange that of all Ossoff’s many speeches attacking Trump’s corruption and incompetence, the right wing suddenly decided to go (performatively) ballistic about this brief two word reference. They are the ones driving the massive attention to it. Do they see this as a political winner for themselves?
ReplyDeleteHow do we know that David in Cal is not really Natalie? Why don’t we just ask him why he is such a groveling trump lickspittle?
ReplyDeleteThis is Fat Marmot Week in CO. Mt. Blue Sky is a good place to go see the marmots, sunning on rocks. It used to be free to go there and see wildlife, such as the mountain goats, but Trump made a deal with a developer and now it costs $22 to get in, even with a National Parks pass. Every day, in every way, Trump is making our country a worse place to live.
ReplyDelete