Good morning 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.
To lose one is a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness. Oscar Wilde spoke of parents, but in the White House, it is aide after aide who have been lost, so what comes after carelessness? Donald Trump is experiencing an exodus of his senior staff, a wave dominated of course by the mic-drop departure of Karoline Leavitt, but which has claimed a new name this morning. We’ll name them, and expose the full scale of the stampede as polls plunge and the president gets stuck in a forever war. The escapees are of course fleeing from a president with mounting health problems, and this morning we’ve got the latest from Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who has found the courage to break the medical wall of silence about a clearly declining 80-year-old president. Also this morning, Pete Hegseth is confronted with an awkward personal question amid the scandal of the USS Abraham Lincoln, where a sailor jumped overboard and families are blowing the whistle on conditions aboard; Darlene Graham’s path to six years in the Senate gets choppier; and poor Donald is showing us on the doll where Elon Musk hurt him. Handkerchiefs at the ready…
Please form an orderly line as you leave the West Wing. There is only room for one departure at a time. Because as Donald Trump stares down the barrel of an almost certain blue wave in the House, a Senate result the prediction markets can’t predict, and a grim morass of a war he started in the Middle East without a clue about what would happen, there is a growing stampede to get out of his White House. In the space of just two weeks, Trump has lost his White House counsel, David Warrington, deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson, and of course, on Wednesday, his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. If he had hoped the bleeding had been stanched, think again: This morning brought a fresh exit.
This time it is the national security apparatus being hit, with Marco Rubio’s most senior aide in the National Security Council, Andy Baker, off unexpectedly. Isabel van Brugen has the full list.
Of course, one Trumpy loyalist’s departure is another Trumpy fanatic’s opportunity. And so to MAGA’s most high-pitched, spittle-flecked power couple: Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and his podcasting wife, Katie Miller. Could their his ’n’ hers fealty to the Dear Leader become a West Wing double act? This morning we have an answer.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, the distinguished cardiologist, has enjoyed (if that is the word) obloquy this week since he put a crack in the dam of the elite medical silence around Trump’s clear health problems. For doing what so few doctors have been willing to do—say what they can see with their own eyes about the 80-year-old president—he has been called “an asshat” by Davis Ingle, a 32-year-old White House aide who spent years as a congressional intern, not a medical one, and was inevitably accused of being a Democrat, the ultimate MAGA slur. But the attempt to silence Reiner has backfired. And now he has identified what he says is the “most extraordinary” symptom the head of the executive branch is clearly experiencing—and which his aides refuse to acknowledge.
The Daily Beast has been reporting without fear on Trump’s health since the very start of his second presidency. We haven’t been cowed by the bullies in the West Wing—unlike a lot of the elite media, which refuses to talk about his health. That’s because of our subscribers. So if you have already subscribed, thank you for your support. And if you haven’t, join our community, and you will be supporting independent journalism holding the White House to account. And stay tuned: We are not giving up this vital work.
The new homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, inherited a mess from ICE Barbie Kristi Noem. But this morning we are learning that he also inherited her ability tick off Trump’s inner circle of aides—which is precisely the issue that cost Noem her job. Noem was forced out for the crime of running ads without Trump’s imprimatur. But now the aides are turning on Mullin as a “bad actor” for going behind their back and phoning the elderly Trump when they’re not there to get his approval for moves his aides would block. My colleague Tom Latchem reveals what brought this to a head.
The heartbreaking scandal on board the USS Abraham Lincoln has seen a sailor at the end of his mental tether jump overboard, and others plead with their families for help. Those families have been blowing the whistle on living conditions for a crew of almost 5,000 on the aircraft carrier who have now spent the entire calendar year without setting foot on dry land. And they have been met with contempt by Pete Hegseth, who called their evidence “completely misrepresented.” But now Hegseth himself is facing a very awkward question from Gavin Newsom, the California governor. It is
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