Total Eclipse of the Harp

Pod Save America - Pod Save America

Pod Save America tackles the latest developments in the 'Natalie Harp' saga, examining her outsized influence over Donald Trump despite lacking a security

Key takeaways

• Natalie Harp, Trump's closest aide, controls all information flow to him despite lacking a security clearance, raising serious national security concerns.
• Trump's public appearances this week were largely ceremonial—focused on renovations, crypto meetings, and photo ops with his wife—highlighting his detachment from governance.

Main topics

• Natalie Harp's influence on Donald Trump
• Security clearance failures in the White House

Notable quotes

"He wants to trade stocks and build his ballroom and travel with Natalie. Minus the actual travel part."

"She texts with world leaders on Trump's behalf."

Conclusion

The episode underscores how deeply dysfunctional and dangerous Trump's inner circle has become, with Natalie

Transcript preview

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Even when there was a power outage, the system was back online ASAP after power was restored. SimpliSafe has been protecting your world for 20 years. Celebrate their anniversary with us and save 60 % on your new SimpliSafe system at simplisafe.com slash crooked. That's 60 % off at simplisafe.com slash crooked. Plus when you order, write in our show name in the How Did You Hear About Us survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe like SimpliSafe. If you missed some of your favorite Crooked Pods this week, don't worry. You can now catch up on the week's best moments on MSNOW on Saturday nights. MSNOW is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite Crooked Pods, packing as much analysis, funny moments, and 100 % correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible. Crooked on MSNOW airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. Speaker 1 (2:02) Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we got the latest in the Travels with Natalie saga, auditions for Speaker 7 (2:10) White House press secretary, a big upset in Florida, hard times for resistance candidates, hope in Alaska, and why data centers are dominating the midterms. Then Lubbock sits down with Iowa Senate candidate Josh Turek to talk about his campaign to flip the seat and help Democrats take back the Senate. But before we get to it all, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to Friends of the Pod. As a subscriber, you will get ad-free episodes of all your favorite Crooked Pods, subscriber-only content like Pod Save America Only Friends, access to our excellent Substack newsletters, including open tabs, discounted tickets to CrookedCon, and exclusive CrookedCon perks. Ooh, I don't know what those are. And of course, it's the best Speaker 1 (2:52) way to support independent pro-democracy media. Crooked Con Perks. Actually, I heard it was a – you get like a special one-on-one session with Dan Pfeiffer. Every single subscriber. Yeah. You're going to be busy. Yeah. Well, good luck to you. Speaker 3 (3:07) Anything for the team. Speaker 7 (3:09) Head on over to Speaker 3 (3:10) – Speaker 7 (3:10) And democracy. And democracy, of course. Head on over to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe today. All right. So here are some headlines from this week that you would think might catch the president's eye. Oil rises to three-week high. Gas prices could set August record high with no progress seen on Hormuz. Housing market is on track for its worst year since 2011. U.S. workers are paying more for health care and next year will be worse. Walmart posts slowest sales growth in years as Americans tighten wallets. U.S. debt hits $40 trillion faster than forecasters expected. And Dow falls 500 points after Treasury plan to tamp down yields fails. Just the last couple of days, Dan, those headlines. Not Speaker 3 (3:58) great, as they say. Speaker 7 (4:00) Unclear if Donald Trump is aware of any of these headlines. I don't know if his human printer has printed them out for him. Natalie Harp, who has become rather famous. But either way, his only public events this week have been. An Oval Office greeting with a teenage lifeguard. An impromptu press tour of his White House renovation projects. New helipad, very exciting. A meeting with crypto leaders. That is, of course, the industry that has made him personally $1 billion richer. And on Thursday, a rare appearance at a Rose Garden event with his wife, where he sat quietly while she spoke. Speaker 2 (4:53) Good afternoon. I heard you missed me. Here I am. Speaker 1 (5:02) She did. She did hear that we missed her. Look at that happy couple. So in love holding hands. What's their secret? I don't know. It's just it's just what are the odds that this Speaker 3 (5:12) incredibly heartwarming, not at all awkward photo op was scheduled this week in the middle of Natalie Harpgate? Speaker 1 (5:18) I'm sure it was a complete coincidence. And usually Donald Trump shows up at events and sits quietly and doesn't speak. Speaker 3 (5:26) Famous for that. That is. Speaker 7 (5:28) So the John Ossoff riff that kicked off a week of hysteria on the right, it began with the senator saying that Trump doesn't want to do the job of being president. He wants to trade stocks and build his ballroom and travel with Natalie. Minus the actual travel part. I kind of think this week proves his point. Speaker 3 (5:48) Yeah, it is. Watching him this week, it's just a reminder that he is a very, very old, very, very stubborn man. He's a complete narcissist. And we've been watching him for a very, very long time now. But even after watching Trump for all these years, it is still stunning to the degree that he cannot even pretend to give a shit about anyone or anything else other than the things at the top of his list, which happened to be helipads, ballrooms, and enriching himself. Speaker 1 (6:15) And it's like, obviously, the Natalie comments have just touched off the drama of the week. But that was the message of Ossoff's. speech there. And I think why it was so effective is because everyone can look at Donald Trump in everything that he does. And it's like, well, he seems like he likes getting rich. He likes renovations. And other than that, he pops off and yells at Democrats and people who've crossed him in some way. And other than that, you don't see much of him. That's about it. Speaker 3 (6:46) I guess the whole thing comes down to the fact that Natalie Harp is the one who controls all information that goes to the president. So maybe he's unaware of everything else that's happening in the world. Speaker 1 (6:54) Yes. Speaker 3 (6:54) But just you would think that anyone who turned on a TV to some channel other than Fox News would see what everyone cares about, what everyone's worried about, what their political sitting was, and they would try to do something to address it. Instead, he just keeps digging. a deeper hole on Speaker 1 (7:10) a daily basis. And one thing we've been learning this week, and some of it had been reported in the past, is that other people in Trump's orbit and in the White House and in the federal government. have been a little concerned at times that Natalie Harp is his main and sometimes only source of information and that if you want him to see a briefing memo or a story or a tweet, you have to text Natalie and she'll print it out, which makes the development that MS Now reported just yesterday even more interesting and troubling. Natalie Speaker 7 (7:47) Harp apparently declined multiple times over more than a year to seek a routine security clearance required for most White House staffers, let alone the president's closest aide. And this apparently alarmed national security officials, Secret Service and others. Why do you think so, Dan? I mean, this is Speaker 3 (8:07) stunning. I mean, really, if you were to pick the person that you would want to influence. as some sort of foreign entity or person with a financial interest in the White House. It would be the person who controls all information of the president. By some reports, she texts with world leaders on Trump's behalf. So it's not just that she chooses which truths to put in front of him or which tweets to print out or which crazy things from, I don't know, 4chan to put in front of him. It's that she is the conduit to him. This is how you get in touch with him. She decides who he speaks to. She will type on his phone. And the fact that this person does not have the same security clearance that a White House intern needs to pass is truly and deeply irresponsible. And Speaker 1 (8:54) I don't think there's any conspiracy to it. I mean, they failed to do security clearances for it's like a systemic problem in this White House for lots of the White House staff. But it is sloppy, as is everything else they do. And especially for people who are that close to the president all the time. I mean, she got on the secret plane with him. And this is someone who for a year didn't have a security clearance. And again, this is like you get to the White House, you fill out this form. It's the SF-86. They ask about your entire life. The FBI interviews you like we've all gone through this. And to just be a. top aide to the president, maybe his closest aide and not having done that at all is crazy. And Speaker 3 (9:40) you fill it out before you get to the White House. Yes. Filling it out is one of the conditions for entering the White House for most people. And she wasn't there in the first Speaker 7 (9:47) term Speaker 1 (9:47) again, right? This isn't like she's a returning character. She was at OANN. Speaker 1 (9:55) How many N's are there? God damn it. Speaker 7 (9:57) She was at OANN and he like first met her in 2019 or 2020 or something. She was at the convention. But anyway, so like, yeah, she came to the White House for the Speaker 1 (10:05) first time in 2025 and just, you know, just started printing tweets for him. And that's it. Speaker 7 (10:11) Nothing else. Nothing else. And writing him notes that say, you are all that matters to me. I want to get back to that synergy we used to have where we talk about everything and nothing. I want to bring you joy to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk work. I want things to always be right between us. Those I am just reading from notes that the New York Times. obtained themselves. These are actual notes that Natalie Harp wrote to Donald Trump and left them in his personal spaces, alarming the Secret Service. These are all facts that are known, that are out there. Speaker 3 (10:50) Also once lived in a locker room so she could be closer to him because she didn't have a room at one of the Trump clubs. Speaker 1 (10:59) JVL in his newsletter, he had a good take on this. I think it's like it's somewhat similar to yours, right? Which is he wrote, Maga Speaker 7 (11:07) responded to all this by going into high dungeon and being outraged that Ossoff would dare suggest Trump was banging his human printer. But Ossoff didn't suggest that. He was pointing to the much weirder, unstable and dangerous reality. The president of the United States has an in-house stalker and he relies on this unhinged woman to an extent that is both hilarious and terrifying. Speaker 3 (11:26) There's been some reports that they refer to her as his human binky. But I do want to – you do this for Speaker 1 (11:31) a point. Speaker 3 (11:31) Maggie Haberman has said that. Which Speaker 1 (11:32) adults shouldn't need binkies. This is now the second episode you and I have talked about binkies. Speaker 3 (11:38) What did we talk about last week? We talked about Speaker 1 (11:40) loveys. We talked about with the Max Miller thing. Oh, yes. We talked about the blue bunnies. Comfort Speaker 3 (11:45) items for – but in that case, we were referring to small children, not the president of the Speaker 1 (11:51) United Speaker 3 (11:51) States, the leader of the free world. The issue here is not that Democrats are suggesting that they're having an affair. Because honestly, do we really think Trump's still in that era? No. Do you think someone of his advanced age and deteriorating physical capacity is not having a lot of sex? No, I don't. No, Speaker 1 (12:07) I don't. I think she's obsessed with him. And I think he really likes her because he likes, yes, men and women around him anyway. And she's the ultimate. Like she will do literally anything for him, including. run after his golf cart in Scotland, and then apologize later that she wasn't fast enough. Speaker 3 (12:26) I mean, she's not his girlfriend. She's his nursemaid. That's the point we're making here. Yes, it's Speaker 7 (12:32) true. Believe it or not, the extended MAGA universe has collectively decided to devote most of their energy this week toward expressing Speaker 1 (12:40) outrage over Ossoff's three words, travel with Natalie. That's it. That's all he said about her, which has absolutely... Nothing to Speaker 7 (12:49) do with feeling threatened by Ossoff's political rise or wanting to be seen by Trump defending Natalie's honor. Here's one Oscar worthy performance from Scott Jennings. He Speaker 6 (13:02) unleashed a comment so vile against a young Republican woman working in politics that every woman in this country, no matter your ideology, ought to listen carefully and never forget it. What we are learning from Democratic men right now is that if you're a conservative woman in politics, you are less than human. Oh, they like to bill themselves as the party of women. But is there anything uglier than the party of women explaining to a bunch of clapping seals at a rally how female political staffers are really only good for one thing? Wink, wink. Speaker 6 (13:41) They talk about Ossoff like he's the next Bill Clinton. Sounds like he shares Clinton's views about women in the workplace. Maybe they're right. What he said devalued every woman who goes to Washington to serve our country. And it sent a signal to every young lady out there who aspires to serve that even in the year of our Lord, 2026, with men like John Ossoff around, you'll never be truly viewed as anything other than a sex object. Speaker 6 (14:10) And a political punchline. Speaker 7 (14:12) Sir, this is a Wendy's. This is... Speaker 1 (14:16) Travel with Natalie is what he said. The president wants to travel with Natalie. You know, I Speaker 3 (14:22) don't watch a lot of CNN. Speaker 1 (14:24) That Speaker 3 (14:24) wasn't on CNN. Speaker 1 (14:25) I Speaker 3 (14:26) know. I'm getting there. And if I'm ever served one of those clips on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter that shows some giant fight on a CNN set, I score my pass. I do not need that in my life. So when did the goatee come into play here? Speaker 1 (14:40) You know, it's a great question. I am not a frequent viewer of those CNN clips either. And so it just sort of appeared one day. That was the most offensive part of that whole thing, honestly, to me. That was distracting for you. Speaker 3 (14:56) Yeah, it was hard to focus on the Speaker 1 (14:58) cogent argument. You're saying that's even more vile than what John Ossoff unleashed on this poor defenseless woman by saying that the president likes to travel with her. Speaker 3 (15:08) It sends a message to every man with a weak chin who heads to Washington. Speaker 1 (15:15) Now, on one of those CNN panels, we could have played this clip, but there were so many Scott Jennings clips this week that, you know, we had to pick and choose. But someone said, oh, I'm so sick of the fake outrage. And he lost his shit. Not quite. Adam Mockler, get your fucking hand out of my face. Losing his shit. Scott Jennings has done in the past, but was like, how dare you put words in my mouth and say this is fake. Speaker 7 (15:39) This is I believe this and I am defending her honor and this enrages me. Here's a quote from Thursday morning's playbook about Scott Jennings histrionics. Others in Trump world dubbed Jennings jockeying as a fairly obvious public audition. For a White House press secretary job, he's been eyeing since the transition. The clips of Jennings, defending Natalie, made their way around the White House. Wow. That's amazing. How? How did they get there? Oh, in part because Jennings sent them to several senior staffers. Oh, okay. So he was so angry and outraged in such a genuine way that he Speaker 1 (16:21) yelled on CNN and on his... whatever radio show. I don't know how you get it on the internet. And then got Speaker 7 (16:30) the clips already and then sent them to the people in the White House he hoped would hire him for the job Speaker 1 (16:37) of press secretary because he's just so genuinely upset about everything. Speaker 7 (16:42) What do you think, Dan? You think Scotty might get the job? He was number three on my list. We did this last Speaker 3 (16:47) episode. I was going to hold off on this, but I'll do it right now. I know everyone listens to every episode, but for those of you who missed, Judd and I did a very serious but very fake game where we power rank possible contenders. Troma's not picked the person yet, but you outplayed me in that game. I did not have Scott Jennings. You picked no one, which is still correct at this moment. And so I picked Marco Rubio as a joke. Still possible, I guess. But you did great. You did excellent in that game. Here's the thing about... The job of prosecutor Donald Trump. It requires you to go on TV, lie, and just generally debase yourself publicly on a daily basis. Well, check. He's got that. So basically he wants to do the same job, but Speaker 1 (17:34) presumably with a pay cut, Speaker 3 (17:35) I Speaker 1 (17:36) guess. Yeah. I mean, he's got that part nailed, but his problem is he's a giant pussy. Speaker 1 (17:48) Caroline Leavitt, whatever else you want to say about her, she's pretty unflappable in that job. She's got the lying part, right, that you just mentioned. Like she's nailed that. Same thing with, you know, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. But they are not nearly as emotional as Scott Jennings is. I mean, he almost cried when Adam Mochler put up his hand on CNN. He loses his shit on panels constantly. And Caroline Leavitt never lost her shit in that briefing room. Speaker 3 (18:19) Yeah, I tend to think he probably gets a little bit of a little Speaker 1 (18:24) bit of a beta. Yeah, Speaker 3 (18:25) little. Yeah, he's a snowflake beta. I think he probably gets plaudits for that sort of losing his shit on CNN. That's probably what they're going for. That's why they pay him. But in the White House briefing room, that's just not a particularly effective way of doing your job. Yeah. I mean, he would be bad. He would be bad at the job. It's worth noting the guy I'm pretty sure was like a relatively mid-level staffer for Mitch McConnell for many years before he was elevated into this role of America's heel on television by CNN. He also he's like punching Speaker 1 (18:52) way above his weight class here. He was also very much against Trump in 2016. Speaker 3 (18:56) Yeah. Speaker 1 (18:57) So he was a he was he was an early never Trumper that quickly switched, Speaker 3 (19:01) which is how we got on CNN in the first place. Speaker 1 (19:03) Yeah, I think I think he was a never Trumper. Then I think he was an anti anti. And now he's, you know, now he's full Trumper. And I'm sure the conversion Speaker 3 (19:09) was totally sincere and done in good faith. Everything Speaker 1 (19:12) he does is sincere. And if you don't believe so, he will send you the clip. Speaker 3 (19:16) How could a man who considers Mitch McConnell a father figure to him love Speaker 1 (19:22) Donald Trump in such a way? There's another clip of him. I could play another of him on a friend Adam Friedland show where he basically is like, yeah, I like put on a show. It's like wrestling. I do like – and then at one point Adam's like, OK, let's – I'll give you any topic and you have to argue the topic and you have to argue the position even if it's not your position. And he gives – I forget what it was, but he gives him some liberal position and it was like frightening watching Scott just like get right into it and argue the position as if he completely believed it. So again, that part is all why he would be a great press secretary for Donald Trump. But I do not think he can handle the pressure because he is a pussy. Speaker 3 (20:01) I have to say, heading into this podcast, I did not – my over-under on your use of the term pussy was definitely not two. And in fact, in the nine years we've been doing this podcast, that's maybe the first two times you've used the word pussy on this podcast. Well, it's Speaker 1 (20:13) just – it's the only thing I can think of when I think about Scott Jennings. The word. The word. Yes. Wow. Speaker 4 (20:33) This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You hear us mention BetterHelp often, but what really matters is what people are saying after they give it a shot. BetterHelp is an average live therapy rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client session reviews. The feedback from real people who have used the service speaks for itself. More than 6 million people have used BetterHelp globally. BetterHelp therapists have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience. They also hold all required education, training, and certifications across a range of mental health specialties, meaning the perfect therapist for you could be a few clicks away. BetterHelp makes it easy to get started, answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist based on your needs, and switch therapists at any time if it's not the right fit. 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