As well as trying to avoid talking about Natalie Harp, Trump has been threatening to bomb the bond markets, blaming Canada, begging the Supremes not to keep him hangin’ on and cosying up to Little Rocket Man
Donald Trump spent much of this week trying to avoid talking about Natalie Harp, the ‘extremely close’ executive assistant whose role in the White House sits somewhere between ‘Oval Office gatekeeper’ and ‘weird security blanket’.
Before we get to the rest of the week’s bizarre moments, it’s worth addressing why the Natalie Harp story is one that needs to be told. Some would say it’s unfair to focus on a member of staff – even one employed by the most powerful and consequential man in the world.
At their most innocuous, Natalie Harp’s oddly close relationship with Donald Trump is the story of a young woman, perhaps a vulnerable one, whose enthusiasm and support for a political hero has turned into desperate obsession.
But at worst, it illustrates the kind of messianic devotion with which Trump has surrounded himself in his second Presidency.
Not all of Trump’s team are so enthusiastic in their outpourings of love for their President. But Natalie Harp is not the only one who thinks he’s an unquestionable gift from god.
Meanwhile, Trump has been threatening to bomb the bond markets, blaming Canada, telling the Supremes not to keep him hangin’ on and cosying up to Little Rocket Man.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Trump threatens to launch military strikes on the bond market
Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week said he was going to double the Government’s purchases of long-term US bonds in a bid to prevent a panic in the bond markets – wobbles in which have sent government borrowing costs skyrocketing.
But that’s not what we’re looking at today. We’re looking at this truly bizarre moment where Trump, asked about the intervention, appeared to have some kind of brain episode and threatened to bomb the bond market.
They’re not even a real country, anyway
Donald Trump has come up with a wizard new scheme for making life more expensive for regular Americans, just in time for the midterms. Blame Canada.
Well, strictly speaking, each side blamed the other for trade talks breaking down on Friday night – but the upshot is both sides have slapped 50% tariffs on the other’s goods.
President Donald Trump’s import taxes will hit about 5% of what Canada ships to the United States every year, ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors. Prime Minister Carney said Ottawa would respond with targeted tariff protection for industries exposed to the new US duties, including some steel products. He also mentioned the dairy, appliance, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics sectors.
No further talks were planned. Whatever the eventual outcome, a loss of trust seems one of the earliest casualties.
Carney accused Washington of using “economic integration as a weapon” and said “its signature was written in pencil.” Resorting to the language of battle, he said his country had been “attacked” by the new American tariffs. “You’re at war when you get attacked,” he said, adding that Canada had the reserves, resilience and plan to respond.
Where’s the beef?
American ranchers used to be among Trump’s fiercest defenders. And why not? He promised them a utopian future during the campaign.
But he has, understandably, gone down in their estimation since it turned out he was perfectly willing to screw them in time for the midterms.
In his second intervention in the beef industry this year, Trump announced he’d struck a deal to allow 300,000 metric tonnes of beef mince to be imported to the States, tariff free, over the next three months.
The importers, Trump said, had agreed to sell it at 25% off market rate – in a move he said would help to “rebuild the herd” of American cattle – which is at its lowest rate for decades due to drought and high working costs for farmers.
But it has the added advantage of making food a bit cheaper until shortly after America next goes to the polls.
Colin Woodall, of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, told the New York Times that “flooding the market with government-subsidized, below-market beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd”.
And let’s not forget this is the second time Trump has screwed farmers this year – after promising to import 80,000 metric tonnes of beef from Argentina in a bid to shore-up Agrie President Javier Milei’s struggling government.
Trump heckled by man in ‘kill paedophiles’ shirt
Trump gave another one of his pre-midterms rallies in South Carolina last night. The rally was in support of Darline Graham, who is running to replace her late brother Lindsey in the Senate seat – and is rapidly proving to be a liability.
But the most embarrassing thing that happened at the SC rally was the guy who stood up during Trump’s speech and shouted something indecipherable, while wearing a tee shirt that read: “Kill your local paedophile.”
If what he was shouting was anything like as coherent as what was written on his shirt, Trump probably needn’t be worried.
She’s running…
Photos revealed by the Mirror on Friday show Donald Trump aide Natalie Harp sprinting after his cart at his Scottish golf course – confirming just one of the many bizarre tales about the President’s “Human Printer.”
It came after bizarre letters she sent him confessing her devotion to him were published.
Questions continue to be asked about the 35-year-old executive assistant’s unusually close relationship with the US President. Harp is nicknamed the “human printer” because she frequently prints out and hands the President printouts of flattering news stories and cherry-picked poll numbers – acting as a “filter” for information reaching him.
But many of the tales about Harp’s behaviour are the stuff of legend, and reported, usually credited to anonymous sources, in books and longreads. Like the time she is said to have ridden in the boot of an SUV in order to stay close to Trump.
So it was a pleasure to be able to confirm one of the legends – that she sprinted around Trump’s Turnberry golf course on foot in 2023 – as entirely true.
Pictures published by the Mirror show this incident for the first time. Harp is shown running full-tilt uphill after Trump’s cart on the first day of his trip to Turnberry on 2 May 2023.
Worried that she had upset Trump, Harp explained in a letter during or shortly after the trip: “The first day I was told there were no carts, and people walked, which is why I walked.
“The second day, I was specifically asked by, I forget who his name was, but one of the main people who worked there, if I could continue walking, and tell any other girls who would head out there to do the same to spare the Course any more Carts.
“If there is anything else I have done to cause you trouble, please forgive me.”
And it didn’t end there…
We also revealed today that Trump left his wife at home for another golf holiday in Scotland last year – on which he was accompanied by Hart.
Harp accompanied Trump to Turnberry last July for a second visit – where she followed him on the golf course and sat in on at least one meeting with a world leader.
You can read about that one here…
More shenanigans in Trump’s BBC lawsuit
Donald Trump’s lawyers have badly miscalculated the President’s increasingly preposterous lawsuit against the BBC in many ways. There was the original lawsuit, which would have forced Trump to hand over his financial records – we talked about that in our weekly Youtube roundup here.
There was the bit where they managed to get it written down in evidence that a maximum of 285 people watched the offending Panorama programme in the United States…we talked about that in this episode – and I strongly recommend you give that one a watch if you haven’t, because it’s super funny.
Anyway… perhaps Trump’s biggest blunder was assuming the BBC was just like any other media company – and that they would fold under the threat of a 10 billion dollar lawsuit and settle out of court.
See, Trump sues a lot of people – but his lawsuits seldom end up in a courtroom. Particularly when it comes to media companies, it increasingly seems that a settlement is what he’s actually after. It happened with ABC News – who agreed to pay fifteen million dollars after a presenter wrongly stated that Trump had been found liable for rape, when the jury found he’d technically been found liable for sexual assault – a distinction the judge put down to a quirk of New York law.
Later, Paramount settled for sixteen million dollars over an entirely spurious lawsuit relating to the editing of an interview with Kamala Harris on an episode of 60 Minutes. The interview was entirely fine, but Trump decided had been edited to present Harris in a flattering light, and Paramount had a merger they wanted to get through the regulators.
So one can imagine Trump’s team saw the Telegraph having a meltdown about the editing of the Panorama programme – which again, was broadly fine – and thought…”easy money.”
But from the beginning the Beeb has said they would fight this lawsuit to the end. And their lawyers’ assertive approach to the case certainly does not give the impression they’re in any mood to tell Trump “oh I suppose you’re right, here’s a few million quid to go away.”
There’s just very little incentive for them to do so. They don’t have a parent company that needs to do business in America. And while they are technically allowed to settle out of court, the BBC is rarely sued, and has a real appetite for defending claims it thinks are weak – not least because any payment would be taken out of licence fee cash. And suddenly the British taxpayer is effectively paying money to the leader of a foreign country over a spurious lawsuit – and it becomes a diplomatic issue.
Meanwhile, Trump has been getting increasingly upset about the BBC doing entirely normal things to fight its case.
See, they’ve issued summonses to Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner to give evidence in the case.
The BBC says all three have personal knowledge of Trump’s state of mind on January 6th.
But they’ve been somewhat reluctant to allow themselves to be served with papers – something that usually has to be done in person in the states. And their secret service protection have declined to facilitate the process.
So the beeb have gone back to the judge to ask for help in making arrangements to get these witnesses to give evidence.
And that’s why, on Monday, a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team issued a wild statement accusing the BBC of “seeking to harass him, his family, and supporters”.
The beeb has now asked the court to allow service of papers to be done by email and certified mail.
What makes this interesting is that in pursuing what he thought would be an easy case of extracting cash from a broadcaster, Trump may have succeeded in prompting a full-scale relitigation of what happened on January 6th – an piece of history he’s spent a lot of his second presidency trying to rewrite. This could turn out to be a genuinely massive story when it lands in court next year.
Kim Jong Un
And if all that wasn’t enough, Trump is cosying up to North Korean megadictator Kim Jong Un again.
The pair have been talking again. Trump posted a picture of him and Kim taken during his first term – back when a President alienating America’s natural allies while cosying up to its enemies was a novel event.
Then on Sunday night he had a direct pop at South Korea, announcing he would be scaling back American involvement in a series of military drills alongside Seoul, and branding the plans “inappropriate and hostile”. Trump later explained that his was partly out of revenge for South Korea refusing to help with the war on Iran. Which is not an unreasonable position for South Korea to take, given they get 60% of their oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
And when he was asked about the gruesome twosome rekindling their situationship, Trump casually let slip that North Korea has “57 nukes”. Which is something you don’t really want to say out loud, especially in front of – as he was – the White House Press Corps and a load of contractors working on his new helipad.
Supremes won’t stop Trump’s ballroom. Not even in the name of love
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is allowing the White House to continue construction on President Donald Trump’s $400 million ballroom project for now. Roberts signed a temporary order on Friday allowing work to continue while the court considers an emergency appeal from the Trump administration. Lower courts had ordered a halt to the project, finding that it must have congressional approval.
Honestly, at this point the structure is like 60% built. Even if building it was illegal, what are they going to do? Order Trump to rebuild the East Wing brick by brick?
Actually, yes, that would be the funniest option.