Good afternoon and welcome to the Daily Beast’s Cheat Sheet on Substack, where we’re bringing you the stories you need to know now—and that we’re not afraid to publish.
The name Natalie Harp isn’t one which needs much introduction to The Daily Beast readers. While the elite D.C. media ignored for months how a 35-year-old blonde had become Donald Trump’s constant companion, we put aside the name-calling from the White House, and detailed her presence—and revealed that the Secret Service had expressed concerns about her. But finally, Trump has been asked about Harp—and his answer this afternoon was extremely revealing. We’ve got all the details. Of course, that’s not the only story of Trump’s affections, because this afternoon he also revealed new details of what’s going on with Kim Jong Un, a brutal dictator who is aiding Vladimir Putin and firing ballistic missiles, but who Trump clearly adores. Also this afternoon, we’ll tell you why the bizarre spectacle of Ivanka Trump avoiding being served happened; reveal a new, concerning problem for Trump’s wartime U.S. Navy; and name the extremely surprising inspiration for the Democrats in 2028.
For once, this afternoon, Natalie Harp, newly turned 35, was not at the side of the 80-year-old president when the inevitable happened. Harp has been Donald Trump’s almost constant companion for months now, popping up behind him in photos, smiling, laughing, and being tagged on social media by her West Wing buddies. But then came two key developments in the space of a few days. First, Trump was revealed to have fled Air Force One in a catering truck and leapt on a decoy plane. Marco Rubio stayed behind; but Harp was with him for his escape. It made clear who Trump really values. Then, on Sunday, the rising Democratic star Jon Ossoff went there. Trump, he said, cares only about building his ballroom and traveling “with Natalie.” That set the stage for an explosive Oval Office moment.
Sitting surrounded by the gold he loves, Trump was directly asked about Harp. It is the first time the elite media have done so. And the result was astonishing: He ranted about Ossoff, among other things.
Quite how important Harp is to Trump is pretty clear from her Air Force One and Catering Truck One appearances. But this is a two-way street. And Michael Wolff, Trump’s definitive chronicler, has an astonishing insight into her need to be there, and willingness to make sacrifices to be beside him.
By any normal standards of foreign relations, which Korea the United States prefers is a pretty simple question to answer. One is a prospering democracy which exports cars, cosmetics trends and K-pop. The other is led by a dynastic dictator who executed family members with anti-aircraft guns, and is providing men and material to Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. But this is Trump 2.0. And this afternoon, in the Oval Office, we got a jarring reality check on whether Trump prefers South Korea’s democracy over Kim Jong Un’s dictatorship. He was asked about a decision announced on Truth Social late Sunday to scale back U.S. involvement in South Korean war games—games seen as more vital than ever because of Kim’s growing ballistic missile threat—and turned it into a chance to kiss up to one side, and disparage the other.
The Oval Office session where Trump attacked Ossoff and fluffed Kim reached a nadir when it became a struggle session involving, of course, a female reporter. Trump has history, including, infamously, snarling “quiet piggy” at Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey, and telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that she doesn’t smile enough. This time, Collins was not in the West Wing, but her colleague Kristen Holmes was, along with Ryder Williams, a 16-year-old lifeguard who saved a surfer, and who Trump tried to turn into a weapon in his attack on yet another woman.
Insulting a prominent member of the White House Correspondents Association was hardly the only blow struck to civility and decorum in press relations in recent days and weeks by Trump’s White House. There was the speech to the WHCA’s (rescheduled) dinner which bombed, with its mortifying jokes. And there was lying to the reporters on the decoy plane about the Catering Force One con. So what more perfect backdrop, then, for the WHCA’s president Jacqueline Heinrich, of Fox News, to reveal that she has made a decision about whether to invite Trump to next year’s dinner.
Her father is memorably suing the BBC for $10 billion for an unfortunate edit on a documentary show in the United Kingdom upon which he has seized as a way to hammer the press. But Ivanka Trump was probably not consulted on it. If she was, she would not have been surprised that
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