Letters from an American - Trying to Change the Narrative

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

August 19, 2026Republicans are melting down over stories about Trump aide Natalie Harp, The White House attacked a CNN reporter for asking about a comment by Jon Ossoff, The right wing media piled on Ossoff although their outrage was manufactured, The Harp business did distract from news about Trump’s apparent stock manipulation and Trump’s ballroom - which is vastly unpopular, Trump is downplaying the poor conditions aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, and his administration’s flailing in Iran, ABC and the Walt Disney Company have launched a federal lawsuit against the FCC for violation of free speech rights, The national debt passed $40 million, a record, much sooner than expected, The Harp story has brought attention to Trump’s need for a buffer between himself and the outside world, and Republicans don’t seem able to change the narrative and use it to attack Ossoff.Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

August 19th, 2026. The political world has been consumed over the past few days with a Republican meltdown about Trump's aide Natalie Harp. The story began when Democratic Georgia Senator John Ossov said at an event for his re-election campaign on Sunday, that Trump does not appear to want to do the job of the presidency. Assoff added, He golfs and trades stocks. See, 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. That was it. That was all he said.

On Monday, CNN reporter Kristen Holmes asked Trump to respond to Asoff's comment. Trump first referred to Asoff as Pee Wee Herman, a child man film character created by late actor Paul Rooms. Rubens, then defended the ballroom and attacked the reporter. Later, as Scott Nover of the Washington Post reported, the White House Rapid Response Team took to social media to call Holmes a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession. Then, in an unusual escalation, the account targeted Holmes as children, posting, someday your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It's quite troubling. You could almost feel the palpable relief that the White House

might be able to gin up a controversy that could rally the base, one that for the first time in a long time didn't automatically show the president or the administration in a bad light. undermining Asoff, whose speeches have been a particularly sharp thorn in the administration's side lately, appeared to be icing on the cake. Certainly, the call went out to right-wing media figures to pile on to the idea that Asoff was making a sexist attack on harp. Megan Kelly posted that Asoff was clearly implying that Trump is having an affair with his staffer, and Michael Knowles wrote, every time I see a woman at work, I just know she's sleeping with her boss. Am I right? Anyway, am I the new Obama yet?

White House spokesperson Stephen Cheong wrote, John Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics. And Newt Gingrich posted, John Ossoff owes Natalie Harp a personal apology for having smeared her. Matt Royer of the Democratic National Committee Youth Council noted, the word affair was never uttered, and yet apparently every single conservative talking head in the world heard it anyway. So what does that tell you? He added, Never have I seen a more exquisite example of the Streisand effect, where someone's supporters fall over themselves to basically accuse them of adultery when it wasn't even brought up.

Commentaring the news cycle with manufactured outrage, distracted attention from other issues, Ossoff did call attention to in the same sentence. Ossoff called out Trump's apparent stock manipulation, an issue Trump highlighted recently when he sold early access to his truth social posts for as much as $100,000 a month. It's been widely reported that investors appear to be making a killing

by anticipating Trump's posts as they make markets go up or down. An investigation by Casey Tolan and Isabel Chapman of CNN, published on July 16th, found that Trump himself made at least 44 stock purchases of 21 different companies within a week before he posted a complementary truth social message about the firms, their executives, or their products. He's selling faster access to his tweets, and then you can bet on the markets, comedian Shane Gillis recently told popular podcaster Joe Rogan. It's literally

insider trading. Rogan, whose support for Trump in 2024 was important to his victory, responded, wait a minute, is that real? How is that legal? Who's telling him this is a good idea? A hundred thousand dollars to get early tweets? That's literally crazy. He's just on a grab. As Matthew Chapman of Raw Story reported, the two went on to discuss Trump's involvement with cryptocurrency. This government, has done some expletive, that no government has ever done before, and one of them is the crypto stuff, Rogan said. The crypto stuff is nuts. Trump has made billions in crypto. Then you got his sons, and his sons are involved in these weird business deals, and there's a lot of money flowing around that you could dig in and start arresting people. Attacking Ossoff for allegedly

smearing harp, also shifted attention from Trump's ballroom, which is enormously unpopular and which is in the news as Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court to override lower court's rulings that he does not have the authority to build such a structure without the permission of Congress. Even Republican members of Congress seem reluctant to grant such permission, as it highlights Trump's grabs for luxury, while Americans are hurting under high gas and grocery prices caused by Trump's tariff wars and war on Iran. Recently, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who with Jonathan Swan wrote about Trump's second administration in regime change, has told podcasters Ezra Klein and Axios' Mike Allen that Trump spends about 70% of his time working on his Washington, D.C. projects. he's spending a huge amount of energy, mental and otherwise, on these renovation projects,

beautification projects around Washington, and then monuments to self, Haberman told Alan. She described a visit with Trump 17 days into the Iran War in which it was very clear what his mind was on while we were there, and what it was not really on was the war. You would think that on the 17th day of the war that he would have maps of the Middle East or maps of troop deployments. Who knows? Haberman said. He picks up these pictures and they're of maple trees. And he says, I'm choosing maple trees for the White House. I'm good at picking trees. I'm paraphrasing here, but that's pretty much what he said. Recent reports tie the lack of supplies on the USS Abraham Lincoln to Iran's damaging strike on the only U.S. naval base in the Middle East, known as Naval Support

activity Bahrain in the first weeks of the war. Trump has downplayed the poor conditions aboard the vessel, infuriating the families of the sailors. He continues to downplay the flailing of his administration in Iran, as well as Iranian forces continue to control the Strait of Hormuz. When asked today about the strait, he told reporters, last night we had a lot of boats come through. We have possession, complete control of the Strait. I mean, outside of the Strait, of nuisance value, and there is nuisance value when they shoot a drone every once in a while. And not everybody's going to go through, but they come through. And over the last couple of weeks, we had a lot of oil coming in. A lot of oil. It's not going to be perfect, but it's a lot of oil

coming in. A lot. In fact, people are amazed. Scott Waldman of Politico reported Monday that while an average of almost 140 ships a day traversed the straight before the war, last Sunday only three did. The harp story has also taken oxygen from increasing pushback against the Trump administration. Yesterday, ABC and its parent corporation, the Walt Disney Company, launched a federal lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, saying the Trump administration violated, their free speech rights. The lawsuit claims that administration officials tried to do Trump's bidding

by launching investigations and challenging broadcast licenses because Trump didn't like their talk show opinions, news coverage, and late-night comedians. As David Fokinflick of NPR noted, the lawsuit began with the words, government censorship is deeply un-American. This is a 180 for ABC. In 2024, it agreed to donate $16 million to Trump's presidential library to settle a lawsuit Trump brought over the assertion by George Stephanopoulos that Trump had been found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. In fact, Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse, and the judge said that while what he did fell under the common definition of rape, New York State's law had a very precise definition that his actions didn't fit. The settlement made ABC one of the

first to settle with Trump. That money seems to have disappeared and there is currently a congressional investigation into where it, along with almost $50 million more from similar settlements, has gone. FCC chair Brendan Carr, seemed to back away from previous threats, saying that ABC and Disney were acting too hastily, and that the FCC has not yet decided whether to renew the licenses. Ultimately, he said, they're going to get a fair shake before the agency. Jeremy Barr of The Guardian shed light on the issue today when he reported on new documents obtained thanks to a Freedom of Information Act or FOIA request and a lawsuit from democracy forward, showing that Carr has been working closely with the White House and right-wing media.

In addition to talking and meeting with White House officials, Carr has been working with the Fox News channel and the chair of the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group. There is also the uncomfortable fact that the national debt passed a record $40 trillion yesterday, much sooner than expected. The U.S. is currently spending more than a trillion dollars a year to pay interest on the national debt, more than it spends on defense. As Stephen Ratner noted in the New York Times yesterday, Trump said in his 2024 campaign, we're going to grow like nobody's ever grown before. But, in fact, the economy is slowing. He promised to bring the cost of gasoline below $2 a gallon. It is now above. of $4 a gallon.

In 2025, Trump said he would balance the federal budget, but, in fact, thanks largely to his tax cuts for the wealthy corporations, the deficit is growing. Also in 2025, Trump promised that his new tariffs would enable him both to cut taxes and to pay down the deficit. In fact, the national debt, relative to gross domestic product, or GDP, is about to break the record, set during World War II.

Republican operatives appear to have thought that the harp story could enable them to pivot to attack Asov and change the narrative, but it seems they miscalculated. Their attention to Asov's statement that Trump would rather travel with Natalie has brought attention to the relationship between the 80-year-old president and the 35-year-old aide, who was once a host on the right-wing OAN network. Maggie Haberman told MS Now that for Trump, Harp is sort of his binky, for lack of a better way of putting it, a comfort blanket.

She is the main buffer between Trump and the outside world, filtering the information the president sees, setting up meetings and passing along messages, writing social media posts, and printing out articles praising Trump. In their book, Haberman and Swan wrote that Harp leaves adoring letters to Trump. in private spaces, saying things like,

you are all that matters to me. CNN's homes reported that harp is physically close to Trump at all hours of the day, and that Harp once jumped into the trunk of an SUV to stay close to Trump after being told there was no room for her in the vehicle. The renewed scrutiny of Harp has turned up the story that for more than a year,

she refused to get a routine security clearance to work at the White House. A national security official expressed concern to Jake Trailer and Jacqueline Alamani of MS Now that Harp has more access to sensitive information than nearly all of the other White House officials. When Trump left a decoy Air Force One airplane for a smaller plane in early July, he left behind cabinet secretaries, but brought harp with him. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.