Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.
Jonathan Lemire at The Atlantic:
You are reading this story only because the White House didn’t want you to.
I’ll explain. This past Sunday, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia—who has become quite good at delivering viral campaign sound bites, slickly filmed by multiple cameras—unleashed a blistering indictment of President Trump’s leadership. Ossoff, a former documentary filmmaker who is generating 2028 buzz, denounced Trump’s handling of the Iran war this way: “While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. 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.”
It was a pithy and well-structured attack, but not so different from the broadsides delivered daily by Democrats on the campaign trail or on MS NOW. But one new word stood out: Natalie.
The line got a knowing laugh from a handful of observers in the room, and it electrified a subset of political obsessives on social media, who took to their favorite platforms and group chats with some version of “Oh, he went there!” or “I can’t believe he did that!” But although Ossoff’s aside resonated with the junkies, the majority of Americans likely had no idea who this Natalie woman was, and might never have given it another thought.
But then the West Wing lost its mind. And Trump did too. Their pushback was so overwhelming, so obviously coordinated, so ugly and personal that it became a story. The White House inadvertently created news, as well as a permission structure for even the most cautious, fact-based media organizations to take on the topic. Which is why the name Natalie Harp is now everywhere.
And the resulting stories have not benefited the Trump White House.
SCOOP: Trump aide Natalie Harp worked at White House without security clearance for a year
— Jake Traylor (@jake__traylor) August 19, 2026
Both people said Harp’s reasoning for failing to complete the process was unknown. After concerns mounted among the White House counsel’s office and security officials, the president…
Maggie Haberman shares new details about Trump aide Natalie Harp and her rise inside the White House: “She is a channel by which… foreign leaders try to reach him.” pic.twitter.com/ggzoV0DPk2
— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) August 20, 2026
