Who is Trump aide Natalie Harp… and why are Democrats targeting her?

0:00Natalie Harp:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Natalie Harp:Listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:37Natalie Harp:Again and again in his political career, Donald Trump has been on the ropes and has managed to fight back. Is he in a situation now from which he cannot escape? Is there no fight back possible for him? The war in Iran is stuck, it seems, and there is a sense among some Americans that he really is out of ideas this time. The Democrats sense an opportunity. See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. Ouch, on many fronts. That was a Georgia Senator John Ossoff, the White House reacting pretty angrily to what he said, particularly about the president's executive assistant, Natalie Harp.

1:22Natalie Harp:It does feel as if the White House is under siege at the moment. Can he get out of this scrape? Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast.

1:32John Ossoff:AmeriCast from BBC News.

1:34Natalie Harp:You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up, and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump arrangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

1:58John Ossoff:Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau.

2:01Natalie Harp:And it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England, at three o 'clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, London time.

2:08John Ossoff:And Justin, it's with some trepidation I want to start a conversation about what's going on with Donald Trump and Iran. Because although there's bits of news every day coming out, it's so difficult to get a real grip on what's actually happening and what direction we're going in. And the more I kind of angst about how to analyse this, how to express it, the more I'm realising, I think, that Donald Trump doesn't really understand where we are or where we're going either. So let's try and explore that and see if we can make some sense of what the strategy, if there is one, is that's going on right now.

2:44Natalie Harp:Yeah, and if there isn't one, then that's also important, isn't it? Because that's a commentary, and I think we're going to come to this as a sort of theme of this episode. if there is no strategy, if he really is flailing about and if his people are unable properly to explain what he is doing, then that is quite a serious moment. And it's worth saying right at the top, isn't it, Sarah, this podcast has always treated Donald Trump seriously. We've taken him seriously and occasionally literally as well. In other words, we have treated the things that he has wanted to do and his extraordinary political abilities as real because they are real.

3:21Natalie Harp:And we've also treated his supporters as real supporters who have a genuine desire to see things done in the United States. So this podcast has not been a place where we've just endlessly been laughing at Donald Trump and suggesting he is about to fall and to fail, which is, I think, the important context for what we are about to say now.

3:42John Ossoff:Yeah, it's getting more and more confusing what he's saying, and it's more and more contradictory as well. Throughout the course of the conflict with Iran, he's often made some quite optimistic, maybe the generous way of putting it, statements about being close to a deal. Quite often he said them. It appeared in order to kind of boost the markets a bit if they were getting the jitters about the oil price. But it's more erratic now what he's been saying. Let's just go through the last couple of days. On Monday, we had him threatening to bomb Oman, a US ally who's talking to Iran at the moment about trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

4:17John Ossoff:He was going to bomb them to S, he said, if they got in the way of a deal. And on the same day, he said that he had back channel negotiations going on with the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was denied by Iran. And then on Tuesday, he says there's no talks going on with Iran at all, contradicting himself, insists that the Strait of Hormuz remains open. It's not. Ships have been fired on this week. Somebody's been killed this week trying to get through the Strait of Hormuz. And he's been posting some rather bizarre things on social media, including a graphic that claimed that the Strait of Hormuz was now American territory.

4:55John Ossoff:And that's before, Justin, we even get into what he's been saying about other countries as well around the world.

5:00Natalie Harp:Yeah. So then he issues this order on Tuesday night to scale back the joint military training drills with South Korea, apparently in retaliation for its decision, for South Korea's decision, not to get involved in the Iran war. Let's listen to what he told reporters. This is his justification of it all. It's in the White House. It was on Monday. When I called recently the president of South Korea, who I like, I think he's very nice, actually. But I called him, I said, would you like to give us a little hand? We don't need help with Iran, but if you'd like, give us a hand with Iran. He said, no, thanks.

5:36Natalie Harp:and I said, wait a minute, we have 39 ,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong-un, your next-door neighbor, and you're not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran? That's strange. And then they say, well, they don't want to get involved with getting, you know, guarding the strait where they get most of their oil, they get 50 % of their oil, and they don't want to get involved. Why are we doing it?

6:04John Ossoff:So, Justin, this was a real surprise. One, the president turning his attention to the Korean peninsula and two, lashing out at South Korea, another staunch ally usually of the United States, who it seems he wants to punish for not enthusiastically joining his war with Iran, even though he said he didn't need their help. because he thinks that there's too many US service members there, too much subsidy, essentially, from the United States towards South Korea. But it's also part of him rekindling his flirtation, I think, is the best way to put it, with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.

6:42Natalie Harp:Yeah, and he was asked, wasn't he, about that. Let's listen, actually, to the obvious question that arose from his decision to scale back those military exercises.

6:51John Ossoff:How do you respond to the folks who say that you are prioritising the interests of adversaries in North Korea over our long-time partners by scaling back to military activities?

7:00Natalie Harp:No, I'm making it much safer. You see, I'm actually making it much safer. Kim Jong-un has always treated me with great respect. And we met on numerous occasions, actually, two primary occasions, spoken and spent time. I understand him. He understands me. You're doing war games. I get along with him. You know, he didn't like Biden. He didn't like Obama. He didn't like anybody. But I get along with him very well. Now, what I'm doing is making things safer.

7:35John Ossoff:Now, that's a questionable claim. But there are reports that Donald Trump's really eager to have another meeting with Kim Jong-un, that he wants him to come to the United States before the end of this year, maybe in November or so. And if there is any pattern here at all, Justin, it is Donald Trump's love of a military dictator, His desire to curry favour with Vladimir Putin, President Xi in China, with Kim Jong-un in North Korea. He's got this kind of adoration and fascination for the world's more reviled dictators at the price of his democratic allies.

8:08Natalie Harp:Yeah, there was this great article by Peggy Noonan, who was once Ronald Reagan's speech writer. So she's a veteran. I think she'll forgive me for saying she writes for the Wall Street Journal. She has a column in the Wall Street Journal. She's increasingly worried about Trump. She wasn't necessarily against him when he was elected a second time. She could see why he was elected. Rather, as I was saying, we could on this podcast. But she's now saying, and I thought it was such a telling point, and it goes to what you've just been talking about, Sarah. She says the thing is about Trump, he's always trying to move on.

8:43Natalie Harp:He's always trying to find something else, some other. He gets bored, he gets frustrated, and he's always, and in previous times, has always been able to find another target, ruffle some other feathers, pick a new fight, have a new argument and move on. And with Iran, you know, you can see him trying to move on with Kim Jong-un. You can see him trying to move on the subject and also the focus of everyone's attention. But the trouble is with Iran, it's such a big thing that has happened and it's having such an impact potentially on him domestically as well because of the price of gas, etc. That he's just not able to move on and you can sort of feel his frustration, can't you, in that?

9:28John Ossoff:Yes, you can. And we'll get to how it's impacting the politics domestically here in a bit. But let's just unpick a little bit of what we think he's trying to do here. What they're saying around the White House, what aides to Donald Trump are telling us off the record, is that this is part of a strategic pivot where Donald Trump is now going to look at Korea, look at talking to Kim Jong-un, look at other parts of the world where he thinks his attention is needed and deprioritise Iran. Now, I mean, do they think that we were born yesterday? I mean, obviously he is trying to change the subject. Obviously he's trying to move on from Iran because he's stuck.

10:05John Ossoff:He's in a quagmire of his own making. He doesn't know what to do. Iran are pretty clearly dug in without any prospect of doing a deal this side of the midterm elections because they know the war carrying on hurts Donald Trump domestically. So, yeah, he's trying to change the subject, possibly because he's bored of it, also because he's stuck. But it's not necessarily going to work. And there's no intellectual coherence around this at all, because Kim Jong-un is another leader with nuclear weapons, the number of which have vastly increased since he first engaged with Donald Trump during Donald Trump's first term.

10:38John Ossoff:Nothing to do with the relationship Donald Trump built up with him has in any way stopped North Korea developing and increasing its nuclear weapons, whereas he is now stuck in this war of choice with Iran to try and stop them developing any of them at all. It doesn't make any sense.

10:54Natalie Harp:Yeah, and that side of him, it's what Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, once called his alcoholic's personality, isn't it? This idea that he just goes on and goes on and is endlessly optimistic in spite of things not going well. And that actually, again, is brought up in Peggy Noonan's article because she I haven't read it yet, but I know you've read this book that has been written by two New York Times journalists about the first half of the second term. And one of the things she refers to, which I think is in that book, it is in that book, is a conversation he has with Tucker Carlson, his former ally.

11:30Natalie Harp:I don't think you could really call them allies anymore. But Tucker Carlson, the right wing media personality, who rings him and says he's worried about the idea of going to war with Iran. This is before the war actually happens. And Trump says to Tucker Carlson, it'll be fine. Don't worry about it. It's going to be OK. And Carlson says, how do you know it's going to be OK? And Trump replies, because it always is. And it's that sort of sense that somehow there is always a way out. Just as there was a way out when he was down and out and he lost the election in 2020 and everyone said he's finished and he was going to go to jail and all the rest of it.

12:05Natalie Harp:And there was a way out. And I think he still thinks that about Iran. And it must be immensely, immensely frustrating to him that he hasn't found it.

12:13John Ossoff:And of course, up until that point, when he's having that conversation with Tucker Carlson, it has all gone all right. He took a big risk last year, June last year, bombing Iran's nuclear sites. That could have spiralled into something really dangerous in the Middle East, but it didn't. Iran didn't retaliate particularly strongly. It was a pretty significant victory for America and for Donald Trump. Then, of course, they had great success in Venezuela at the very start of this year. So he felt emboldened by this. He was doing difficult things, using the military around the world to achieve his ends with remarkable ease up until that point, without ever actually coming stuck like he is now.

12:54John Ossoff:And so he just presumed that Iran was going to go the same way and brushed away people's warnings about what could happen with the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, and the enormous problems that that's causing for him economically and politically up to this point. It is as though this is the first time actually in his life he has met a situation that he cannot bend to his will or use to his advantage and he doesn't know where to go from here.

13:17Natalie Harp:And it feels really striking, doesn't it, that all the years of the left wing comics, the late night shows having a go at him, all the times that they've tried to get fellow Americans to laugh at him just hasn't really worked. He's never quite stuck. And yet now there are some politicians who are beginning to land blows on him. And the biggest of those blows, it seems, comes from this guy, John Ossoff, who we've talked about briefly, haven't we, as a potential presidential candidate. Still in his 30s, Democratic senator from Georgia, is up for election in the midterms and looks as if he's going to win the right to go back to the Senate for the state of Georgia.

13:59Natalie Harp:He makes this speech in which he refers at the beginning to the plight of the USS Lincoln, this ship, this aircraft carrier that's been at sea far too long because of the Iran conflict. But then, oh my goodness, he jams in a few other things as well. And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. he golfs and trades stocks so 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 not just on that flying palace is it that he travels with

14:47John Ossoff:natalie she was also one of a very small number of trump's closest staff who was smuggled off Air Force One and onto that military jet that flew out of Turkey to the UK as he returned from the NATO conference because there was a security threat against him. So that tells you just how close Natalie is to him. But I think John Ossoff really hit an nerve when he mentioned her in that speech.

15:10Natalie Harp:And that is because, and a lot of people think he went too far and shouldn't have mentioned her, but it's because she has, and it is fair to say this, isn't it, a peculiar adoration for Donald Trump. And there's a sort of subtext there which suggests it's a relationship that is closer than it should be. And he didn't actually say that, but he kind of leaves it hanging there. So it's a particular needling of Donald Trump as well. It's worth making that plain, isn't it?

15:38John Ossoff:Yeah, and let's just remind AmeriCasters about Natalie, whom we've been talking about for two years. Yeah, we were there first. Yes, exactly. We discovered Natalie long before John Ossoff had ever heard of her. She's a very close aide of Donald Trump. And one of her functions is to print out things from the internet for him, favorable coverage, things that are being posted on social media, things that will flatter him and reinforce his ideas about himself. So she's often delivering good news to Donald Trump. She helps with his social media posts. She's up with him late in the night often typing them out.

16:15John Ossoff:She trawls the internet and finds some of those more bizarre memes and things that Donald Trump likes to post on social media. And he has said of her that long after everybody else has left and gone and found new jobs and are making money off the back of their time in the administration, the one person apart from his family who will stick with him will be Natalie Harp, he says.

16:37Natalie Harp:Yeah. And it really has upset the White House, hasn't it? It's worth quoting directly the director of communication, Stephen Chung, who launched this attack on Ossoff after those comments. So this is what he said. The biggest loser in politics. Instead of denigrating hardworking people serving their country, John should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he's a miserable person who hates this country. That suggests to me, Sarah, that this really did hit home.

17:07John Ossoff:Oh, yes. And if people hadn't picked up that reference to Natalie and John Ossoff's speech, the White House's reaction to it has made sure that everybody is very, very well aware of this because it wasn't just that reaction from Stephen Chung. Donald Trump was asked about this when he had reporters in the Oval Office at the beginning of the week. A CNN reporter was just asked, what did he make of these comments from Ossoff and read them out? And he was furious. He shut her down. She was a reporter from CNN, attacked her, calling her fake news and bad at her job. But then the White House went on social media and really lashed out at this woman, saying that her children should be ashamed of her, that she was terrible at her job.

17:53John Ossoff:I mean, really vicious and over the top attack on her personally, which, of course, provoked its own reaction with lots and lots of other reporters coming to her defence and turning this into a big story that it didn't need to be and causing lots and lots of people to ask, why are they so sensitive about any mention of Natalie, who happens to be a very, very attractive woman, often seen at Donald Trump's site, and described today in the New York Times, because everybody's writing about her now, New York Times calls her a platinum blonde geezer of positivity. They're to buck him up when the going gets rough.