Off the Record: We Don’t Talk About Natalie

0:00Happy Friday, Slatesters. It is Friday and this is the time when we go off the record just for you, our Slate bus friends and neighbors. We spend our weeks getting answers from experts on the biggest stories out there, but sometimes there is a story that you just can't get out of your brain. It is weird. It gets in there. It's a brain worm. Day in, day out, hiding in catering containers with you, printing out articles in 20-point font for you, taking your dictation late into the night as you release a 40-truth-long thread about Eugene Carroll. Okay, I'm not actually talking about the news. I am talking about our one particular news story that we're going to talk about today.

0:42Here to help me out is what next senior producer Rob got there. Hello, Rob. What's up, Lizzie? How are you? Okay, so the thing I want to start with that I was alluding to in that intro, we have been talking about this a lot in our various meetings this week, and it's all over everybody's social feeds. Trump aide Natalie Harp. This is a person who kind of hummed along in the background of Trump 2.0, finally broke into mainstream consciousness. We have this Slack channel that's like our behind the scenes channel called What Next Bullshit. You have dropped links about her twice in three days. Tell us who Natalie Harp is.

1:18Yeah. So Natalie Harp is a 35 year old aide to President Trump. And she got renewed attention in the spotlight, as you mentioned, because of some comments made by Georgia Senator John Ossoff this Sunday. And if you weren't paying attention, like I didn't pay attention to his speech, it's very easy to miss, right? Like he just, he had this long speech and he puts this reference to President Trump doesn't care about all the crises that's going on in the world. I'm paraphrasing. He just wants to be traveling the world in his decked out plane with Natalie. And that was it. And that was it. I think we should we should play the clip.

1:56Evan, can you play the clip so that we can hear John Ossoff when we talk about this? 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. OK, so I think we should say Natalie is like a not a body man. That's a person in politics who has like the briefcase and the, you know, water and the very common follow principles around. But she's like the human printer, right? She prints things out for the president. What do you think Ossoff was implying? We had a big staff-wide debate about this. What was he saying in your read?

2:39Well, in my read, I mean, you know, our discussion was like, is this sexist? And that seems to be the way that Trump and his allies are trying to frame this, which I just got to say, if Trump's allies had said nothing, this would not have been a story at all. There's some serious Streisand effect. Yeah. As soon as as soon as Jon Ossoff said, Natalie, there were barrages of tweets and statements from White House officials. You know, the one communications director of Trump world called Jon Ossoff like a cuck loser. He called him Jon Jackoff. And it's just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you talking about?

3:18I wasn't paying attention to John Ossoff, but now I'm paying attention. But to your point, like all of these right wing attacks are saying, how dare you go after Natalie? Like, this is so unprogressive of you. I thought progressives loved women in the workforce. And the idea is that they're trying to like slander her. And again, John Ossoff did not say anything explicitly, but you're pointing at like the undertones, like what was he saying without saying when he made this attack, right? Right. I mean, I and this was, I think, a subject of some legitimate staff debate. We are seriously letting people behind the curtain here.

3:51The question that we were debating was whether or not Ossoff was implying that they were having an affair. I mean, I think John Ossoff's a smart guy. He knows that he's never going to go out and say that, even if he doesn't think it's true. Like, he could just say, Natalie, you know, travel with Natalie. And the people who want to interpret it that way can, and the people who don't, don't. And I would say our staff is divided. Yeah, you know, luckily I wasn't at that meeting, so I don't have to come on the record on this off the record with my take. And I will say that, like, of course, it's impossible to separate like gender or sex from any discussion, especially one in politics, especially one in White House politics.

4:32So like it goes without saying that, of course, of course, even if the message was unintended, it was received in a completely legit way. Like, yeah, you're saying that Trump wants to hang out with this young girl because yada, yada, yada. Right. But I don't know. I've also seen like Jamel Bowie has a really good take. Jamel Bowie and David Axelrod sort of had this like not direct back and forth online. David Axelrod was saying something like, oh, you know, Democrats need to be careful of these attacks. And Jamel Bowie was sort of saying like, no, Democrats need to call out something weird. And it's the only way that's going to get through this sort of like, you know, mirage of whatever the Trump world is trying to protect.

5:11It is objectively weird that Trump has this young woman reportedly like sleeping in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago, reportedly like maybe staying stowing away in the trunk of a car because there was no room for other White House aides in one of his cars. She was one of the select few that didn't get put on the decoy plane. Right. You know, that after Air Force One was reportedly threatened by an Iranian attack. And, you know, there's like going back as far as 2024, she's apparently chasing after his golf cart in Scotland, you know, with this portable printer running after the president as, you know, trying to keep up with him so she can print out these tweets for him.

5:46I mean, it is an objectively weird situation. And I think you could generously look at John Ossoff's statements. It's just like, look at this. This is not normal. This is not how, you know, the president of the country should be acting. That's it for now. And if you want to hear the rest of this episode, the way to do it is to subscribe to Slate Plus. Unlock Slate Plus now by going to slate.com forward slash whatnextplus.