The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Creepy Trump Keeps Hiring Melania Look-alikes

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to unpack Donald Trump’s ever-expanding harem of lookalike aides, surrogates, and “comfort blanket” women inside the presidential bubble. With Melania absent, Trump has surrounded himself with younger clones — from Natalie Harp, the so-called “human printer,” to bikini-clad attorney Alina Habba, to Melania doppelgänger Margo Martin. Wolff, an accomplished Trump biographer who has observed this dynamic firsthand in the West Wing and beyond, explains how Trump’s obsession with appearance, loyalty, and media control manifests in the women around him — many of whom are fighting viciously for his attention. Wolff also reveals how one of these Melania clones controls most of the information that reaches the president and why jurors in Trump’s criminal trial were “creeped out” by his Stepford-like entourage. Wolff explains how Trump’s fixation on TV-ready staff masks a deeper insecurity and clear isolation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In effect, the whole Trump presidency is a break from the presidency. I'm Joanna Coles. You're listening, watching or jousting to the Daily Beast podcast, and I'm here with Donald Trump's brainworm. Yes, the obscenely bestselling author Michael Wolfe, who is deep inside Donald Trump's brain and will be bringing us more explanation of that very strange gray matter. But today we're talking about one of my personal obsessions, and that's the women around Donald Trump. the women in the White House, who look very Stepford wifie to me. They all look the same. And yet they have very distinct roles.

So I'm fascinated by Natalie Harp, aka the human printer, because she literally drives around the golf course with a Wi-Fi printer, printing our good news for the president. And of course, Laura Luma, her new best friend. So let's get into it. Michael, welcome back. Last time you were on the podcast, as many people commented, on YouTube, you talked about this fascination that Donald Trump has with a sort of bygone era.

And part of that bygone era, a sort of white America where white men were supreme, is the women who are around him and what they look like. And I wanted to get into it because with Melania in absentia and Ivanka disappeared, he still never. the less, got a group of women around him who look like younger versions of them. They all look remarkably similar. And they all feel like contestants from the competition he used to own Miss Universe. Well, let me do a curious, slight backstory here. Because when I was, when I was writing in my first book about Trump, Fire and Fury, I was in the White House for about seven months. I had a kind of carte blanche, was watching everything. This show unfold literally before my eyes.

Sometimes I would just sit on the couch in the West Wing waiting to see someone for the next appointment. And at one point, seeing this, trying to absorb all this, I texted my wife. And I said, do you think it's unusual that every... Every woman that I see here has long hair worn down, skirts above the knee, and this was in the winter, and high boots. It's the uniform. I mean, literally every single one. And most of these were young women, young women, but there was Kelly Ann Conway looking the same. just significantly older.

And yes, my wife confirmed that this would be highly unusual for every woman in office to be dressed like this. And I would add that they're all surprisingly attractive. I mean, it's very unusual to walk into any political office and find the women. And perhaps I'm going to be, I'm going to get a lot of hate for saying this. But they, well, they look like models. They look like beauty contests. Well, some of them are very smart.

And certainly many have been. Many have been models. You know, one of in the in the first administration, the, the pivotal, the kind of head girl was Hopix, who actually had been a model and then had been in the PR business. And there's always this connection he makes between being good looking and being in the PR business because then you're a face, you're a, you're front looking. And she had been working for Ivanka in Ivanka's family. business as a PR. Yes. Yes. And then was taken into politics. She had no other qualifications except that she looked the part. She didn't know anything about politics. She had never worked in politics,

had never worked in government. I remember talking to Hope Hicks because when she came out of the White House and we can go into why, but she did the rounds looking for a job and she came in to talk to us. And at the time, I think I was Chief Content Officer of Hearst magazines. and I was struck by how incredibly attractive she was. She was playing with her hair the whole time. But she also seemed very nice. And she described her life attending to Donald Trump. She had to be in the White House at 5 a.m. every morning.

And she said she woke up at 3 a.m. every day. She went to bed at 8 p.m. It sounded like a very lonely life. But because she'd been an athlete, I think she was a hockey player, actually. She said she was used to getting up early to get on the ice. and that she would be in the office by 5 a.m. But she got up every day at 3 a.m. It seemed like a very monastic, weirdly monastic.

Well, I think most people around, I mean, Donald, it's hard to work for Donald Trump. I mean, he is very demanding of people's time. And that's really is. I own your time. You have to be here. And you have to be at my back end call. That's, I mean, that's essentially the job of all of the. the women, and to some extent, the men, but specifically all of the women, anticipate his needs.

So they become this, you know, it's hard. It's not just a support system. It's a kind of comfort blanket. I mean, there's a view certainly within many of the people in the White House who have spent many years now speculating on this, that he is, and this is the term they use post-sexual. Right. But these... So he's gone from the days when he would call up the New York Post and say, Marla Maple says, I'm the best sex she's ever had.

Yes, exactly. Right. He's now post-sex. Right. And, you know, I mean, because the people around him have wondered about this and they've worried about this and what's he doing and with whom. And then they kind of have come to this understanding that he's not really doing anything. But one of the things he is doing is populating this, his world with women who he, I suppose, in another life or at another stage of life might have been involved with.

I mean, they look like Molania, in fact. And so they're a kind of, I mean, a kind of, you know, sexual surrogacy in its own peculiar fashion. Well, and again, it's performance. So it looks like he's an older man who can attract these much younger, very good-looking, very well put together women, which signals something to his base. No. Yeah, two stories. I mean, during the, during his criminal trial in New York, the Stormy Daniels. The Stormy Daniels trial, the first thing, there were several women from the first.

administration who testified Hope Hicks, a woman by the name of Madeline Westerhout, who had been his, I guess, really sort of personal assistant, kind of secretaryish, until one night she got drunk and started to gossip about the family, about the Trump family, and then was immediately fired. So those two women testified, and then the other women were sitting in the courtroom next to him. Natalie Harp, Margo Martin, Alina Haba, and, you know, I mean, very present and very unusual to see all of these women all dressed the same. And after the trial, I spoke to one of the members of the jury, and the jury that convicted him, by the way, on all counts. And so I was sort of going over what what this juror saw felt, what the reaction of the what he could tell me about the entire jury. And among the things that he singled out, he said we were all creeped out by the women around him.

They were creeped out by them. Meaning what? Meaning, you know, the first thing, this was a trial essentially about a sexual. issue, offense, circumstance. And here were all of these women who obviously suggested

some kind of near fetishistic interest. So they felt that, I mean, he felt that this was a, that this became one of the influences on this, on this jury. Obviously, it supported the

entombed, idea that this was, you know, well, yet another of Donald Trump's sort of expressions out there. Right. So the first one is the jury were creeped out by the fact that Trump was surrounded by women, all of whom looked the same. Yes. And then there's when he was during his legal, the legal mess that was unfolding during the

the campaign. And he put together a legal team, I mean a really third rate legal team. And he would admit this. I know at least to two people, I know that he told this story. He said, yeah, you know, I may not have the greatest lawyers in the world. But then he would take out his phone and show a picture of several of the women on the team. And he said, but I have the hottest lawyers. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness.

All right. So back to Natalie Harp, who's also pretty hot. Yeah, no. I mean, Natalie, who is a key function in this White House. She is one of, in Mafrey, she may be the most direct conduit to Donald Trump. If you want, if you have, if you have Natalie Harp's number, you can speak to the president virtually at any time. We should find Natalie Harps number. I'm sure it's in your phone and we should blast it out so everybody can call Natalie Harp. Absolutely. Absolutely. Where did she come from? She was, she had a on-air, a minor on-air role at the third rate, the fourth-level conservative network, one media. Yeah, one.

And she was ill. And with a disease, the story seems to change from who, from who you hear it from, from, There are many versions of what she was ill with. But during the first administration, there was an initiative, a presidential order, I don't remember, but anyway, clearing the way for the use in some instances of experimental drugs, enabling her to get some particular drug that cured her. And then so she wrote to Donald Trump. saying he had saved her life.

Which would be a very appealing to anybody, but particularly Donald Trump. Yes. And then she got a speaking birth at the 2020 Republican convention. That was a virtual convention, as you might remember during COVID. I blanked it out. I totally forgotten that, but of course. And then in 2022, early 2022, she came on to the campaign. as the, you know, as the, you know, the step and fetch a girl, the, the person.

The search and the body girl. Yeah, get me a cup of coffee. Right. They get me a cup of coffee girl. And, but one of her jobs then was also to run the printer. So, Trump doesn't really, Trump does not use famously does not use email, which has protected him from numerous, numerous, legal situations. And he doesn't really use a computer.

And even his use of the phone is pretty limited. So he likes things printed out. Now, that's also ironic because he doesn't read anything. But he gets things printed out and he and he holds. Yes, yes. And so she had the portable printer. And she would follow him on the golf course. she would have her own golf cart running the printer and from hole to hole she would then be printing out emails and then increasingly stories that she thought he should see and these were usually feel good stories oh this this you know this weirdo website there's some you know there was a lot of fans that.

You know, people would draw pictures of Trump, which he liked to see those. She became the keeper of that. And from that point, she became the keeper of almost everything. Everything he saw. You didn't get information to Donald Trump unless it was funneled through Natalie Harps printer. And where does she sit? Does she have an office in the White House? She sits right outside of his office.

So right outside the Oval Office. So she's the literal and figurative gatekeeper. Yeah. And she earns the role herself by being the coffee girl. By being the coffee girl and by being able to make a comfort blanket, make him feel good. And then within the campaign, and she was, there was enormous animosity with the other campaign staffers because she had such control of him. and then they would say she feeds him his uppers and downers. So really controlling the mood and the mood was controlled through media.

I'm giving you, you know. I'm giving you good media, good feed that. Now I'm giving you this thing that has been a horrible thing that has been said about you. Michael Wolf said about you. Or the Daily Beast said about you. So traditionally a role that might have been played by a wife. I mean, not necessarily filtering all the information. but the idea of soothing him.

Yeah, no. I mean, I think this is, you know, remember, and as we've discussed before, Melania is absent. You know, the time she spends with the president, you know, I mean, I think it's, I mean, reduced to the absolute minimum necessary to sustain the illusion of a marriage. Michael, let's just take a break for some messages. We love our sponsor.

but we do want to get back to the conversation. Does Melania appreciate the work of someone like Natalie up? Is she just grateful that Natalie has taken on this, what I imagine, is unfillable role? I think it's probably both things. I think she probably sees a completely inhospitable environment for her at this time because it's an environment filled by other surrogates of the wife role. There is no place for her. I mean, I assume I guess she could come in and sweep everyone aside.

But I think that marriage is long past that. She probably then said, okay, I don't. There's no room for me here. And I'm grateful not for there not to be any demand that I be there. Okay. So that's Natalie Hart. What about Elina Harbour, his lawyer, who was his lawyer during the Stormy Daniels trial? and also looks like one of the Trump women.

Yeah, and she would be one of the people in the photograph. He holds up. My lawyers are hot. My lawyers are hot. And she is now the federal prosecutor in New Jersey. Now, I cannot tell you how, how, I mean, among the many lawyers in the Trump circle who have assumed high position and enormous power. who are of questionable qualifications.

She is the least qualified. And there was a, I mean, she, she met him at the, at the, her, her husband owns parking garages in New Jersey. Right. Parking garages, New Jersey. Okay. Right. And, and they're members of the golf club, Bedminster.

That's a golf club. And so this, the story, the story went that, you know, she was by the pool in a bikini and that's how, how she met Trump. So like one of his beauty contest, yes, from Miss Universe. So, you know, I was, I had this information. I called her, I called her up. And, and she said, and she said, that is absolutely untrue. I will sue you if you say that. But she said, I am a member of the Bedminster Club. I love the Bedminster Club.

I do have a bikini. I love the pool. So I was like, okay. Confusing. Very legalistic answer. Yes. And then she took on a series of legal tasks. that other lawyers did not want to take on, like, you know, suing his niece.

I mean, a whole lot of things that that respectable lawyers would not do. You know, lawyers are all basically, you know, they have their clients, but then they have their reputations. Okay. She was willing to do these things, a whole series of motions and cases that were then thrown out. But she became more and more central, and he would push her forward. He also liked her to be out front.

So whenever there was a court thing. And remember, Trump used these court appearances to enormous public advantage. And they became part of his campaign. Absolutely. And she was out there. She looks, she looks the role. Well, she looks like she's someone from law and order, which is what his base is probably watching. Yeah, no.

I mean, that's a big thing with Trump. A lawyer should be like a lawyer on television. Right. I mean, I remember you saying that he sort of yelled at them, do you not know what Perry Mason would have done it? Do you know who Perry Mason is? Right. But she was a terrible lawyer.

And then he would yell at her. I mean, in vicious, horrifying ways. I mean, you just cringe. During the Carroll trial, he would. Eaging Carroll. And obviously, that was a catastrophe. Poor Trump. It was a catastrophe for Trump.

Yes, yes. And there was a moment when they were going to, they were trying to introduce certain evidence, and she failed at that. And then he, you know, quite in public reamed her out in front of the court. But then made her go out anyway and be the smiley face in front of the camera. So what she gets from that. Oh, and then.

she had actually wanted to be the press secretary, the spokesman, the Caroline Levin job. She didn't get that. Trump, too old. Right, too old, of course. She's somewhat, I mean, she's not an old in any respect, but too old for that job. But then she got this job running the, you know, as the federal prosecutor in New Jersey. I mean, extraordinary. So Alina Haber, Natalie,

harp the human printer. Who's Margo Martin? I'm struck whenever I see her by how similar she looks to Melania, except she's 20 years younger. Right. The Daily Mail is always confusing that. Famously. Right. Well, she does look just like her. She's got beautiful long chestnut hair. She's incredibly interactive. And within the White House, they were always grateful for that confusion because it made it seem like Milan was not the scene. Right. That's funny. So who is Margot? Just to the, you know, an assistant, a tender, you know, again, a part of this comfort blanket staff. What official function does she have? What does she actually do?

You know, I mean, it comes under the broad heading of comms. You know, again. Which, in a sense, is all his presidency is. Yeah, again. Endless comms. And also the link that he always makes between pretty girls and PR. And then we have... Which is not incidental to him.

I mean, PR is, I mean, he acknowledge it. I mean, he is open in his understanding and his, in his, you know, I'm transparent about how important that is to him. I mean, during the campaign and during the trials, it was. There's always my legal strategy is my PR strategy. My PR strategy is my legal strategy. Talked in by Roy Cohn. Yeah. It's so interesting listening to the backgrounds of these women around Trump

because you think of all these students who've come out, you know, doggedly studying political science at Georgetown. And they've spent, you know, several years interning for some God-forsaken senator and some state hoping that they will squeeze into politics somehow. And in fact, it turns out that if you just carry a printer around on a golf court, on a golf cart, that that's actually the way to get hired these days. No, and I think the recommendation, part of the recommendation here is that you know nothing about this. I mean, and, you know, maybe you can, you can actually create some, some deeper rationale. I mean, we don't want politics.

We're against politics. We're anti-politics. We're anti-politicians. We're anti-Washington. All of that, which is- We're anti-elite universities. Which is true. So we want people to work for us who know nothing about politics, who have no interest in politics,

and who have all gone to some Godforsaken college that you've never heard of. Well, one of those people, and that leads me perfectly to Laura Luma, who is the ultimate outsider determined to become an insider. are constantly running around telling people what influence she has with the president. Does she have influence? And what does he make of her? Okay, well, the operational, operationally, everybody is trying to keep Laura Lumer out, except for Natalie Harp. So, as I said before, Natalie is the most direct conduit.

She and Laura Lumer have bonded in some way of friendship or, or just convenience. And that's how Laura Lumer comes in. She calls Natalie. She's in. And the president likes her. Why does he like her? Where does she come from?

She's 30 years old. She looks the part. She's on television often. If you're Donald Trump, well, that's the trifecta. I mean, I mean, what's not to like on Donald Trump's point of view? But the others seem less ideological. Like we don't get a sense that Margot Martin or Natalie Harp are in it for anything other than proximity to the presidency, whereas Laura does seem to have an ideological drive. Yeah, no, obviously, or some, I mean, some, some, some drive.

Well, some drive, right. And she's very maga, whereas you wouldn't necessarily. But he doesn't necessarily see it that way either. He sees it. She's very television. she's good television. So that's amusing to him. I mean, he's not hiring her in the money.

He's not bringing her into the White House. She's not part of his comfort staff, although there were constant rumors for the campaign. But I think that those were started by various people. There was an agenda behind those. rumors to as far as I know that she was more than a comfort blanket yes um or a very comfortable blanket um but um but I you know I think that she just comes in and and she amuses him and she comes in through through Natalie well and to be fair if you're in that job there must be moments when you need amusing um yeah yeah I mean I'm sure that that would be that is

conventionally true. I mean, you think of kings having thought justice. Right. But the, but the, that's, that suggests that Trump is spending time, you know, in, in a serious pursuit of his duties. Right. Well, it's in fact, everybody's there. He then has to take a break from, you know, and in effect, in effect, the whole Trump

presidency is a break from the presidency. And then, of course, there's the mother of them or Susie Wiles, who looks completely. completely different, who is a grandmother and gives off very grandmotherly vibes? An anomaly in this, an important anomaly. And, you know, that she manages to step in there. And I think the fact that she looks the way she does, in 2016, she was running Florida. He didn't know her. you know, she had been brought in to run the state of...

And she was working with DeSantis, wasn't she, Ron DeSantis? She had not gone to work for DeSantis yet. She was a Florida political operative brought in to run the state of Florida for Donald Trump. Oh, okay. And then he went to Florida and met her for the first time and, you know, whatever conversation they had. And then he left and he said, looks like a refrigerator. or get rid of her. That's why he said she looked like a refrigerator, get rid of her.

Yes. Oddly, she does wear a silver draught. It's like a light blue silver. I don't know. You know, there is something in his head. He hits these. He hits these. Well, he's looking at it from the point of view of a casting director, right?

This is all casting. Right. But even the words, there is something riveting about this. Somehow he hits it. he gets it. Or Susie Wiles. I mean, because she's obviously an extremely effective operator. And yes. And anyway, she was not fired and they went on to flip the state of Florida. I mean, really. So the refrigerator won. Yes. And then she came, she was in the same role for 2020. And then after after he lost and returned to Mar-a-Lago, Jared,

who did not want to be the president's keeper and administrative assistant. And, you know, he saw the role there and said, ah, God, get me out of here. He brought Susie Wiles in to do that. And she proceeded to do it well, do it in a way that he doesn't notice, which is really what he wants in that job. And what relationship do the women have? to each other in the White House.

Because you say that everybody, all his advisors hate each other, his cabinet ministers, hate each other. It's a fight for his attention. Do the women get on? Is it a supportive environment? Or are they... They hate each other. I mean, it's a competition.

He is always titting them against one another, always choosing one over the other. And you have to fight for his... I mean, that's what you're doing. you're fighting for his attention. And the one who gives him what he most wants is the one who is closest to him. And the one who is closest to him is everyone else understands that they are not the closest to him. So, I mean, it's so interesting hearing all this. And I want to do another episode purely on the family.

actually and his kids in particular. But it's very noticeable that Jared and Ivanka are not around second time around. I mean, they've made it clear they don't want it. Ivanka's publicly said politics is not for her. It's too poisoners. She doesn't like it. What did they know that everybody else? Well, I think that's the question.

And that's sort of what, you know, if I were one of those people who now in the White House, I would say, wait a minute, I'm here. A guy who knows everything is not here. So what am I missing? And I think it's true. I think they know everything. You know, they went through that first White House. They saw him at his most precarious, precarious in the way that he could have gone down

and could have taken them down with him, almost did on any number of occasions. and they went into this saying and went into this second third campaign saying, you know, no, I mean, you know, you don't want to get, you don't want to tempt fate like that. And of course, remembering now, Ivanka testifying during the January the 6th testimonies. Right. I mean, I mean, they saw, I mean, I mean, they were, they were, they're under. I mean, absolutely no illusion about what happened here, about certainly about the election denial, about January 6th, but about so much else also.

So I, and I think that they've, that this is, that this, they have literally run in the opposite direction. And of course, let's not forget the several billion dollars that they've accrued in the process. All right.

So we need to come back and do. another podcast purely on the family. Do you promise to do that? Every time I talk to you, I've just so many more questions. Let's do it. So my takeaway from Michael this week is just that fight for Trump's attention and how stressful that must be when you are in the White House or when you're working with him, just clamoring for his attention. That sun beaming on you because it's the only thing that counts or gives you validation. And of course, the fact that it's a zero-sum game. If someone else has his attention, you don't. So it's government by gimmick and government by attention. If you have been, thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe to

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