Jon Ossoff Shines Spotlight on Trump’s WEIRD Relationship with Natalie Harp

This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way. Because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai.spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai.spotify. White House Press Secretary Karen Leavitt is leaving the job, Ryan. I know you're sad. I am. You look like you're about to cry. Yeah. It has kicked off a fierce competition to replace her. There's lots of jockeying in the media. We're going to walk through some of the leading candidates to replace her. Who is up? Who's down seemingly compared to the base of the press reporting? And, you know, just tell you all about it. So here's the first contestant in this little White House beauty pageant. Let's watch. We all know that Scott Jennings is more than happy to defend a war with a country that starts with the letters IRA. That we are currently failing. That is going to put us trillions and trillions of dollars more in debt. I was only a few years old while you were in the administration defending prior endless wars. Now this war is failing. Eight weeks is endless to you? Okay. You said it was going to be four to six weeks. You have the attention span of a gnat? Is that what you had? I debated you on TV four to six weeks ago and you said we were weeks away from it. Now you're making condescending remarks because you can't defend the fact that this war is not going your way. Wait, one more time. Not going your way? Name one political concession. Get your fucking head out of my face. Hey, hey, hey, wait, wait, wait. Honestly. That was CNN commentator. Scott Jennings yelling at Adam Mochler, 24-year-old YouTuber. 24-year-old kid. Yep. Shows that he has the temperament to really take on the press. So Jennings worked for George W. Bush both on his campaign and in the White House. He's a longtime advisor to Senator Mitch McConnell. These days he's best known for being the MAGA chud on various CNN panels. Brian, Jennings has reportedly created a lot of buzz in the White House because of his spirited defense of Donald Trump and his aide Natalie Harp. There's this controversy after something John Ossoff said about her that we're going to cover later in the show. Do you think he'd be good at the job? What do you think about Jennings at the podium? Look, what Trump is looking for is an abject sycophant, somebody who will defend Donald Trump no matter what. And that's exactly what Scott Jennings will do. Like he has allowed Donald Trump to shove his hand so far up his ass that he just dictates whatever Scott Jennings does and says like his little puppet. And he has no shame about doing it. That's why he can go on TV. And regardless of what it is, defend anything so long as it came out of Trump's mouth. I mean, this is what an audition looks like. And those are the people who Trump hires. He's not going to hire people because they're competent. RFK is not in that role because he's competent. How dare you? It's a meritocracy. It's a meritocracy. For the end of the DEI era, we sure do have a lot of really inept and unqualified people in their positions right now. Yeah. So, I mean, you guys might be like, why are you guys talking about this clown? CNN says that Jennings has emerged. It's a big deal. Jennings was an early favorite to replace Leavitt at the White House podium, but the process is just beginning. They said that Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, recently met with Scott Jennings. They went to Mastro's Steakhouse in D.C. Someone quoted in the story said he's competent and good on TV. One senior White House official said of Wiles, Wiles had shown interest in Jennings. And then Wiles apparently is looking for a grown-up. Apparently grown-ups are people who scream at 23-year-olds on television who understands how the job works. It can maintain a level of professionalism. As the face of the administration. Didn't seem like the most professional moment. But you know what? I just want to remind everybody that it is important that we don't have women in positions of power because they would be far too emotional for the job. Yeah, Scott Jennings, very emotional. If I were like in the White House right now, in normal times, there's kind of like two parts of the job. There's the on-camera stuff you see at the White House podium. And in the olden days, you wanted someone who could go up there, kind of make an argument, speak confidently about what the administration was doing. And mostly like not make mistakes. Like that was the biggest part of it, not scrub. As you said earlier, Trump wants a fighter. He just wants you to browbeat the shit out of whatever journalist is bothering him. So I would usually think like Jennings is too much of a hothead. But like, I don't know, maybe in like Trump-adjusted terms, he's not a hothead anymore. No, I think he's exactly what they would be looking for. You need someone without shame. Stephen Miller. I mean, look, that's why Sarah Huckabee Sanders was good because, you know, good for Trump. Because she had no shame about shilling for everything. And anything that this administration was willing to do. Caroline Leavitt is in the same boat. You can't show weakness. That's why when we saw a little bit of Sean Spicer going back and forth and hemming and hawing when he got, you know, piled on for his lies, he wasn't going to be able to hack it. But if you can find somebody for whom shame does not exist, and I would absolutely categorize Scott Jennings as part of that group. No doubt. Then that's what Trump is looking for. Yeah, normally I'd say integrity matters, trust, honesty. Not in this White House. Our sweet, sweet summer child. The thing about this job, though, is there is, so there's the on-camera stuff, then there's the off-camera portion of the job, which is really the majority of your day. Because the White House press secretary sits in an office that reporters can just like walk into at any time. You do a lot of relationship building. You're on the road with these people all the time. You're on foreign trips. You're working on, you know, sort of managing press access to President Trump. You're talking about messaging strategy. Again, these are all things in the olden days that I would think about a lot. And apparently Caroline Leavitt was actually really good with like the reporter relationship managing off-camera. They all liked her a lot, and they thought she was like, you know, an honest broker to the extent they exist in this White House. But again, Trump is his own communications director. He takes calls from reporters at random. He dials them himself. He makes every decision about communications and messaging strategy and is like immune to good advice. So, again, normally I'd say like does Scott Jennings seem like the good kind of behind-the-scenes? Relationship-building, care and feeding guy with a press corps? Again, no. But like maybe they just will decide they don't care. It just doesn't matter. Yeah. At this point, they're just trying to get their message out as loudly as possible. And if they have somebody in Scott Jennings who's capable of doing that, regardless of what relationships he can or can't build, if you have a megaphone for somebody and they're willing to just loudly repeat the words that Trump wants repeated, then that's the job. Yeah. All right. Let's watch some more footage of another person. Who is reportedly in the mix. Candidate number two. Somebody said to me, Alina, would you rather be smart or pretty? And I said, oh, easy. Pretty. I can fake being smart. We've forgotten how to be polite. We've forgotten how to be respectful of different opinions. And I know that President Trump will get us back there. He really will. I hadn't actually seen that. Oh, man. I mean, look, she showed right there. Again, the same theme applies. Without shame. If you can say these things with a straight face, like that's like I actually brought back civility. Yeah. I mean, like if you could say something like that with a straight face, I hadn't seen that clip that that like sent me. But like if you can pretend like you believe these things, that's what Trump is looking for. He doesn't want somebody who's going to be a good faith actor. He's just going to be looking for somebody who can regurgitate the things that make him. Sound good. And this is somebody who sacrificed her own law license in deference to Trump. And so clearly she's willing to be a be a lackey in the way that he wants. For those who don't know, that was Alina Haba. She was one of Trump's lawyers. She was like his legal spokesperson on a lot of the cases, especially the Eugene Carroll case. Her current job is apparently like senior advisor to the attorney general for U.S. Attorneys. I don't know what that means. Trump tried to make her U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. But that appointment was deemed unlawful. Basically, they tried to like, you know, erupt the. Then a confirmation process by putting her there. I want to put in that first. The second clip is hilarious because it's just like such obvious bullshit, like Donald Trump bringing back civility. The first clip of her saying, do we have a new tone alert? The first clip of her being like, I'd rather be pretty than smart is it's funny. Like she's obviously kind of joking around with these guys. But it's very telling about, I think, how Donald Trump views these jobs. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. The thing he always says about people when he picks them. Is central casting, right? Like he wants someone who to him looks right. So her saying that was sort of like kind of self-aware. A hundred percent. I mean, look, Pete Hexeth, again, is not there because he's like adept at managing an agency. He's there because he looks like a soldier. He's a strategic genius. Sorry. Sorry. I meant what I meant was he's a strategic. He played Risk in high school. Yes. Sorry. I mean, like, you know, even there's a lot of talk about Natalie Harp. And again, we're going to talk about that in a few minutes here. But Natalie Harp is the latest in a long line of. Young aides who Trump has surrounded himself with who are attractive. This is a recurring theme in Trump's world that he wants people who are not adept for the positions that they're in. In fact, being incompetent is a benefit for them because if they're if they don't have a base of knowledge, if they're malleable, then they become rubber stamps for whatever it is he wants. Yeah. In some ways, he's not wrong about the press secretary job. Like if they're going to choose one job where it is sort of like a central casting choice, the one where your primary job is. To be on camera delivering a message is fine. It's pretty troubling when we're talking about like generals and military leaders and national security types. But, yeah, we'll see. So there is one final sleeper candidate that I thought we should talk about, Brian. And hold on, Tommy. Before we get to the third candidate, the sleeper candidate that you're about to introduce, I just want to mention that for folks who haven't yet subscribed to Positive America's YouTube channel, completely free to subscribe. Great way to support independent media. Great way to hear more from Tommy Vitor. So we're going to put that link right here on the screen. And. also in the postscription of this video. If you're not yet subscribed, make sure to subscribe. Let's watch our final clip here. Canada. At first I wanted it and I tried to divide it into two states. And then I realized we'd be adding Montana basically for the Republicans and electorally like a Texas for the Democrats. And I don't like that. But the fact that they don't want us to take them over makes me want to invade. I want to quench my imperialist thirst. That is Fox News host Jesse Waters. Brian, who better to do White House propaganda than someone who's already doing it at Fox News? You know what? It's so interesting. He's camera ready? He's camera ready. I would never have considered Jesse Waters. And I think he is a little bit too goofy for the role. But then again, against what standard? Can I be honest? Going to that podium with a sense of humor, a little bit of like a twinkle in your eye, like not taking yourself too seriously. Could be effective. This is not a case for Jesse Waters. It could be effective. But Trump takes himself more seriously than anybody. And so I don't know that they would be able to clash because he Jesse Waters is very like tongue in cheek. And Trump is the least self-deprecating person on Earth. And so I don't know that it would jive because I think that a lot of Jesse Waters charm. And I say that meaning to his own audience. That's derived from the fact that he can kind of laugh at himself. Trump can't. Yeah. Jesse says everything with a wink. They know he's in on the joke. Sometimes. He's being hyperbolic and making ridiculous points on purpose. And the audience kind of knows that that skill set is less effective when you're talking about like a terrorist attack on the country. Yeah. Although, look, I also don't know that Jesse Waters would be willing to walk away from what I assume is a very lucrative Fox contract. No. And it's not like he needs the exposure. He's already on the biggest shows on Fox News. I believe he's on two of the biggest shows. He's on the five and he does his show at night. So like it's not like being in front of the White House podium would garner him. I don't think it would garner him any more exposure than he already has or than he needs. But it would be a massive pay cut. Yeah. That said, Trump has recruited a lot of employees from Fox News. That's true. Judge Jeanine Pirro, Hegseth. Who are we missing? A bunch of them. Folks in the first term. John Bolton was like a Fox News analyst and, you know, he's on TV all the time. I think there's no way Jesse would ever take the job if offered. I'm sort of surprised he hasn't been talked about. They're talking about Spencer Pratt who ran for mayor here in L.A. for like seven seconds. Yeah. I guess I never discount the ambition. I don't know the ambition of these people, though. 100%. And look, on the point of Spencer Pratt, I mean, the administration, to their credit, and there is not a lot of things in the world that I'll give the Trump administration credit for, they're good at picking out people who are able to inherently, organically garner attention. And so Spencer Pratt would be ripe for them to tap into here because, you know, they're already tapping into an audience. By the way, it's an audience not just of diehard MAGA people. Like Spencer Pratt garnered a lot of support in West L.A. I mean, granted, that's where the fires were happening and a lot of his campaign was predicated on making sure that L.A. is actually prepared for the next fire. But these are not MAGA diehards. If he can garner the support of Angelenos in the Pacific Palisades or West L.A., then this is somebody very much in line with RFK Jr. who doesn't have the typical audience. And the Trump administration is always looking for clever, albeit pretty easy, ways to expand their influence. Trump's an L.C. guy. I think that going back to the—no, you didn't watch the show? Watch—oh, is this the Laguna— The hills? The hills? Laguna Beach? You didn't watch all this shit? No, I didn't. Anyway, OK. Moving on. I did watch Road Rules and The Real World. And Sean Duffy, right? That's right. Our secretary of transportation. Big Sean Duffy fan. Remember when Sean Duffy wanted to be NASA administrator? Yeah. Why? Liberal Tears is brought to you by PDS Debt. Feel like you're working hard but still losing money every month? PDS Debt can help. They can reduce up to half of what you owe on credit cards, personal loans, and medical bills. And it starts with a free 30-second assessment at pdsdebt.com/rank. Minimum payments aren't designed to get you out of debt, they are designed to keep you stuck. PDS Debt is the way out. Pod Save America listeners who enroll have saved an average of $29,800, so people are actually doing something about their debt instead of just treading water. 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That's pdsdebt.com/rank. Switching gears here, we're now on day four, I think, of this endless controversy about Donald Trump, Georgia Senator John Ossoff, and Natalie Harp, Trump's aide. During the last couple of weeks, we've had a lot of good news. We've had a lot of good news. During a recent speech, John Ossoff said the following. Trump, quote, "Doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace." How dare you?. gifted by the leader of Qatar. How dare you smear her good name? Factual. So that led to this unhinged response from the White House, all these MAGA surrogates. Ossoff was asked about the reaction to his speech on MSNOW Wednesday. Let's watch a clip of that. These White House staffers are a. These White House staffers are adults, public officials paid by the taxpayer with immense power in positions of public trust. And whether it's Natalie Harp printing out Donald Trump's daily dose of delusion and flattery, or Peter Navarro steering taxpayer-funded loans to Trump family investments, or Pete Hegseth deluding the president daily into deepening this quagmire in the Middle East, no one cares about their feelings. The sailors on the Lincoln are fighting his war, a war based on lies, while he plays with his new ballroom, flies around on a jet given to him by a foreign prince, and retreats into this circle of sycophantic aides who tell him every day what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear. So Natalie Harp is having a 35-year-old White House aide who is referred to by other administration officials as the human printer. Her primary job is to make sure that she doesn't end up in jail. I think she deserves a lot of credit because her performance in Obsession was absolutely phenomenal. So I'll say that first and foremost. Second of all, I think it's really like tantamount to political malpractice that the person you're going to start a feud with is John Ossoff, who is not only young, charismatic, good looking, but his main issue is railing against Trump's corruption and doing it in a really effective way. So you're giving a spotlight to the one guy who is the best communicator that we have as far as Trump's corruption is concerned. Yes. It's very, very stupid. And like, honestly, this this I think this story would have come and gone if they had just declined comment or offered some sort of sane comment. Like Stephen Chung is like losing his mind. Yeah. Every Trump surrogate. Clearly, like the Trump surrogates all coordinate messaging. And they were all told, like, go hard at Ossoff on this. And it's only helping him. Ossoff's running away with his Senate race. This is supposed to be one of the most. Receipts in the twenty twenty six cycle and said he's going to mop the fucking floor with Doug Collins. Yeah. I mean, you're right. It's it's it is it is a brilliant play by Ossoff. He continues to double down, which is smart. They're giving him an even bigger platform. And he's, again, one of the best messengers that they have. And on top of all that, there's all this really weird backstory between Trump and Natalie Harp. There are all the weird comments that she continuously makes. There's the fact that Trump keeps her nearby. And and frankly, the last thing I'll say on this point is that if the point that Ossoff was trying to make here was that Trump is not focused on regular people, that he's focused on the sycophants that he surrounds himself with, of which Natalie Harp is is a part by focusing so much on the backlash here. But by by coordinating this response where they all go so hard, if only they would show this much energy, if only they had smoke for for health care being cut, if only they had this much. Smoke for the fact that we spent one hundred and thirty billion dollars on the war in Iran, if only they had this much smoke for the Epstein files being suppressed, like when they want to come up with a coordinated response because they're they're doing all this pearl clutching and virtue signaling, they could. The fact that they don't do it for issues that actually impact regular people is a testament to the fact that while they can, they just don't have any will to do so. Yeah, a possible future White House press secretary, Scott Jennings, was asked about the Epstein files not getting fully released on the timeline. That they were required by law, and he said, don't get your knickers in a twist, I think was a quote, something like that. So that's cool. Natalie Harp didn't have a security clearance for a year. Yeah. But is always by Trump's side in like every meeting. So when national security conversations come up, she'd be sitting right there. So the idea that it's like, you know, sexist or unfair to raise these questions, absolutely bonkers. This story has broken containment from kind of the the politics section of the newspaper to the extent they exist into this. This broader, like, cultural story, here's one example that Brian flagged earlier today. A special hello to those of you watching from home and from the White House. But I do have some bad news for President Petty Roosevelt. That's all I'm going to say about you tonight, sweetheart. Everyone's got a hard question about A.I. Your job, your kids. Kids. Where it's going. Ask yours at claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai slash Spotify. You've got to realize it's time to hang up your wig and let Natalie tuck you in. So good. Did he respond to that? Not yet. He's in the TV. It's oh, it is. It is 100 percent coming because the two things that he hates more clearly are all of this focus on on Natalie Harp, but Rosie O'Donnell in particular. I mean, even if you go back to that initial debate, I think it was in 2015 hosted by Megan Kelly, either 2015 or 2016, where she she presented him with a bunch of the vile things that he said about women. She listed them off. And Trump says only. Rosie O'Donnell. He was like, oh, I'm only talking about Rosie O'Donnell. So he hates her. And the fact that she was able to deliver this jab on Jimmy Kimmel show, no less, is just going to absolutely infuriate paging Brendan Carr. Last thing on Natalie Harp. She says that Donald Trump saved her life because he passed the right to try law, which allows like terminally ill people to just sort of have easier access to medications. She had like a rare bone cancer. But The Washington Post reported that the treatment she used had already been approved by the FDA when Trump put in place the right to try law. So like wouldn't have had an impact. So everything about her story, like none of it really adds up. Her own brother was on TV the other day saying she seems obsessed with Trump and had written letters to other presidents. The whole thing is just really weird. Yeah, that's all I know. I saw Eric Trump try and use that attack line about, you know, this is a cancer survivor. And and of course, like if anybody has the opportunity to to be exposed to treatment that's going to save their lives, that's that's that's great. But but, you know, coming from Eric Trump, who can't even operate. A charity anymore because he funneled money away from a cancer charity into his own family's personal businesses, not the best messenger for that sentiment. Well, the Trump family is very kind to Joe Biden since he's currently battling cancer. You know, so they they pull a lot of punches there. All right, Brian, let's talk about the general political environment for Donald Trump and what it means for the midterms. There was some new polling out this week and CNN's Harry Enten is going to help us sort of set the stage here. Let's watch. Hispanic men, Hispanic men. Donald Trump put up a historically strong performance for a Republican candidate for president amongst Hispanic men. But the phrase this morning for President Trump is I caramba, because look at these shifts. I mean, Hispanic men on Trump in twenty twenty four. He won among Hispanic men by ten points. Look now where his net approval rating is down. He goes into the Gulf of Mexico minus forty one points and an average of polls this year. That is Johnny B. By my. Math, a fifty one point switcheroo against the president, United States, all of that movement that you saw, that historic performance that President Trump had amongst Hispanic men. Adios, amigos. Goodbye. See you later. As Johnny B. Was telling me backstage, these numbers are bonkers. Brian, is a fifty one point switcheroo bad? I don't know. Fifty one point swing from red to blue is a crazy swing. It is. And the sad part for Republicans. Is a lot of their gerrymanders, especially in Texas, relied on this notion that the coalition they had built to win in twenty twenty four was going to be permanent. And now we're seeing a massive realignment. So even those seats that they would have considered safe because they redrew them with maybe a little bit of wiggle room. Maybe they took a few points off to gerrymander a few other seats into their own column. Well, now you've tightened those existing districts. And if we're seeing fifty one point swings among the Latino electorate, which, by the way, is not just theoretical. We've actually seen that play out. And we've seen that play out. out this week. He's pretty bullish on Texas, far more bullish on Ohio than I expected. He's less bullish on Iowa than I would have expected. I think he has Josh Turek at like 41, 42%, but it's still like a toss up. And again, on Michigan, there was a poll out this week by Fabrizio, who's Trump's pollster that had Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate at 48% and Mike Rogers at 47%. So that'll be a close race. Yeah. I mean, they're all going to be close races. And look, yes, this is a hard map, but if ever we want a hard map, this is the cycle to get one, because now we have the opportunity to be competitive in states like Ohio and Alaska and North Carolina and Iowa and Texas, where frankly, Democrats have no business really competing in the way that we are right now. And so it has two benefits. One, if we can coast off of a D plus 10 cycle and, and win in some of these seats, that would be, you know, a huge, huge coup really for the left. And the second is that if we then have the opportunity to show some of these entrenched Republican states, what democratic governance looks like, then we have the ability to hold those positions of power in very much the same way that Andy Beshear is able to do in, in Kentucky. Uh, finally, Brian, our, our viewers have probably heard of Nick Shirley. He's this 24 year old, uh, independent journalist, intrepid, intrepid reporter. He did this video harassing a bunch of Somali run daycare centers in Minnesota. It went super viral because Elon Musk juiced it. And I was like, the right wing loves him. Uh, Nick Shirley took a visit to Sacramento, California and our beloved state here. Let's take a quick, uh, look at how it went. Support service providers. Did you guys hear that Nick Shirley has a small penis allegedly? Wow, that's so adult of you. Did you hear about this? Nick Shirley allegedly has a small penis. Come on, have you guys heard these public reports? There's an investigation going on. If you'd like, there you go. Thank you so much. I'm packing. I don't know what to say here on YouTube, but I'm doing it. I'm doing just fine. So you are not being hostile. Okay. You don't get to, you don't get to touch my things, sir. Items. Is it part of having an allegedly small penis that you feel the need to seal? No. Really has a, an operative in Sacramento named Terry Shands, uh, who decided to just have some fun with this goober. And, uh, for that, we salute you, sir. Thank you. That, that, no, that is the, uh, now that's the reporting that, that we're looking for. Another great moment in independent journalism history. That's right. Knocked another win for the independent journalist. Knocked another win. Uh, thanks for watching this episode. Please subscribe to positive America here on YouTube. Subscribe to Brian Tyler Cohen's channel and, uh, we'll talk to you soon. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. 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