Sunday, August 23, 2026

Doom Report (Week 83: Novel and Dubious)


This week has been all about Natalie Harp, who has gone from someone that very few of us had ever heard of to the butt of jokes for late-night comedians.  The impetus for all this was twofold.  First, Trump bailed on his “free” Qatari jet (which actually cost you and I and every other American taxpayer around a billion dollars) and snuck out on a catering truck because of a credible threat of attack, leaving the vast majority of his cabinet and staff (not to mention all those expendable reporters) to be living decoys.  (We covered this last week.)  And so you can hardly blame people for wondering who he didn’t leave behind: who was so important to him that they warranted a place on the plane that was actually safe?  Well, three people: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Leah Litman of Strict Scrutiny likes to call him Pete Kegsbreath, which I find quite fun), Walt Nauta, who you may remember as the Mar-A-Lago guy who helped Trump try to cover up the stolen documents in his bathroom, and a “personal assistant” named Natalie Harp, who was, at that time, primarily notable for being yet another of the young blondes that Trump likes to surround himself with.

But the truth is, according to reporting done long ago but now suddenly being paid attention to, much stranger.  Harp is often referred to as the “human printer” because she follows Trump around with a portable printer and prints favorable coverage of him for him to read.  Her devotion to Trump is slavish; she’s written several letters to him that ... well, let’s just say that to call them “creepy” would be an understatement.  One pundit called her Trump’s “human binky.”  And, according to Wikipedia, she’s “a devout, evangelical Christian,” her father “died by suicide in July 2020,” and she suffers from “health issues, particularly chronic pain and complications incurred by a medical error involving intravenous therapy for stage II bone cancer.”  So I feel like she was probably already broken long before she fixated on Trump, but she’s gone all in at this point: speech at the RNC in 2020 comparing Trump to George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life, four years on air at OANN, and now ... personal assistant.

The second thing that caused Natalie to leap into the spotlight was an offhand comment by Jon Ossoff.  In the midst of listing the things that Trump would rather be doing than being President, right between building his ballroom and trading stocks, Ossoff said that Trump would rather “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Amir of Qatar.”  And that’s literally the only time he refers to her: you can listen to the whole speech if you like—it’s a tight 5½ minutes, so it won’t take much of your time, and it might help you understand why people are now floating Ossoff’s name as a potential presidential candidate for 2028.  The reference to Natalie is near the end; it’s practically a throwaway line.  But it sent the rightwing nutjobs into a rage: they’ve been frothing at the mouth about how Ossoff has “smeared” Harp for days now.  Except ... did he?  He only said that Trump would rather travel with Natalie, and that’s tough to argue with.  He left Marco Rubio on the decoy plane.  He left Scott Bessent on the decoy plane.  But not Natalie.

If you only have 10 minutes to devote to this story, try Takes™ from Jamelle Bouie; it’s the best explanation of who Harp is.  If you’ve got another 10 minutes, try Bouie again: this time he explains why Harp may be the most powerful person in the White House.  And, if you’ve 10 more minutes, perhaps let Brian Tyler Cohen give you a wrap-up (including clips from the truly insane letters) on his “Another Day” segment from Friday.

This deep dive into the life of Natalie Harp reminds me a lot of the one I did into Ghislaine Maxwell back in week 27.  What Maxwell did is undoubtedly worse than what Harp has done—more essentially evil—but, if Bouie’s take on Harp is correct (and I rather think it is), Harp has contributed to a significant amount of pain and suffering over the past two years.  And, like Maxwell, the hardships of Harp’s life are interesting context for her behavior ... but they are not an excuse.  It can be an interesting exercise to wonder if people will one day be haunted by the ghosts of those whose lives they destroyed—in that sense Harp can join the likes of Musk, Stephen Miller, Ted Cruz—but the depressing truth is they likely will never give it a second thought.  The villains of the story never think they are villains in their own minds; they’re just sad, broken people that can never seem to find happiness, regardless of how much money and power they accumulate.  I’m not saying we should feel sorry for them.  But maybe we should be using them as exemplars of why mental health is so important: imagine how much happier a place the world would be right now if, instead of a “small loan” of a million dollars from his father, Trump had received a million dollars in therapy.

Just something to ponder.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • In past Doom Reports, I’ve noted that this or that person is “on fire” that week if they managed to have several noteworthy videos in the same week.  Well, this week, the person on fire is our favorite conservative-who-isn’t-a-right-wing-nutjob, Adam Kinzinger.  If I wanted to be uncharitable, I could note that Colbert is gone, both Meyers and The Daily Show are off this week, and Kimmel’s guest host was Rosie O’Donnell, who (surprisingly) didn’t do much politics other than needling Trump for the fun of it.  So Kinzinger might be standing out just due to the lack of competition.  But I think I’ll be generous and note that he’s really hitting a rhythm with the “Kinzinger Report"s: he’s got a solid blend of outrage and humor, and he doesn’t stumble as much as he used to (although still a little).  Plus, as a conservative, he often notes things that my usual liberal outlets don’t pay much attention to.  This week, every single day was a banger:
  • Pod Save the UK’s full episode this week was a bit too in-the-weeds in British news for most non-Brits, but I enjoyed this clip of Natasha Devon discussing her new book The Nuance Drought.  For this clip, when they talk about Nigel Farage, think of him as the British Trump, but before he’d come to power; when they talk about Zack Polanski, think of him as a sort of British AOC, and when they talk about MAGA ... well, that’s just MAGA.  Lots of trenchant discussion about how “we we exist in a political system where we’re encouraged to vote for what we hate least rather than what we like most.”  Best quote: “So your political identity becomes about what you hate as opposed to what you love.  And that’s bad vibes.”  Amen.  Also, Devon’s description of the experiment involving pain vs uncertainty was particularly illuminating (and a bit depressing).

I know it’s really hard to keep track of all the awful and illegal things this regime has done, but do you remember, back in March of 2025, that there was a pardon attorney who refused to restore gun rights to Mel Gibson after he had been convicted of domestic violence? so then Gibson whined to Trump and Trump fired her?  That was Liz Oyer, and she was a guest host on Strict Scrutiny this week.

There was a good discussion of Trump’s desperate (and ongoing, despite his Supreme Court loss) attempts to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve, which somehow reminded me of my discussion way back in week 7 about the assassination of Garfield and how it led to civil service protections.  Of course, what Trump would prefer is a return to the system of patronage.  There’s also an interesting interview with Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer about their new book on what it means to be a dissident in today’s political climate.

But the most interesting bit was their discussion of Todd Blanche’s new OLC opinion on executive privilege.  As Oyer characterized it, it “took a really expansive view of the president’s ability to withhold information from public scrutiny”, and she and regular host Kate Shaw theorized that this was an attempt to get a headstart on gumming up the works once the Democrats are in charge.  That is, if the Democrats take control of the House, the first thing they’re going to do is start deposing people, and Todd “I Love You Sir” Blanche wants to give cover for all those people to claim that they can’t talk about what they’ve done, or seen, or participated in, due to “executive privilege”.  As Oyer puts it:

Now, that is not only—just as a legal matter—a novel and dubious interpretation of the privilege, but it is also (as a practical matter) an important signal about what Todd Blanche is planning and preparing for, which is likely a slew of Congressional investigations if the Democrats win the midterm elections.  The purpose of this decision is to be able to insulate as much as possible from scrutiny by Congress if the Democrats start investigating the corruption and misconduct by this administration after the midterms.  So they want—DOJ wants—to be able to respond to congressional subpoenas by saying we can’t give you these documents, or this witness cannot appear to testify, because of executive privilege.

Any my first thought was “novel and dubious interpretation” is a bit of a metaphor for pretty much everything Trump has ever done as president.

But my second thought was: if they’re doing this so as to be prepared for when the Democrats control Congress, that means that they think the Democrats will control Congress.  Their worry is our hope.  And it’s probably the most hope we can hope for this week, so I think we’ll have to be satisfied with that.









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