Total Eclipse of the Harp

**Jon Favreau** (0:20)
Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (0:22)
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

**Jon Favreau** (0:23)
On today's show, we got the latest in the Travels with Natalie Saga, Auditions for White House Press Secretary, A Big Upset in Florida, Hard Times for Resistance Candidates, Hope in Alaska, and Why Data Centers Are Dominating the Midterms. Then Lovett sits down with Iowa Senate Candidate Josh Turek to talk about his campaign to flip the seat and help Democrats take back the Senate. All right, so here are some headlines from this week that you would think might catch the president's eye.
Oil rises to three-week high, gas prices could set August record high with no progress seen on Hormuz. Housing market is on track for its worst year since 2011 US workers are paying more for health care, and next year will be worse. Walmart posts slowest sales growth in years as Americans tighten wallets. US debt hits $40 trillion faster than forecasters expected. And Dow falls 500 points after Treasury plan to tamp down yields fails.
Just the last couple of days, Dan, those headlines.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (1:27)
Not great, as they say.

**Jon Favreau** (1:29)
Unclear if Donald Trump is aware of any of these headlines. I don't know if his human printer has printed them out for him.
Natalie Harp, who has become rather famous. But either way, his only public events this week have been an Oval Office greeting with a Teenage Lifeguard, an impromptu press tour of his White House renovation projects, new helipad, very exciting, a meeting with crypto leaders. That is, of course, the industry that has made him personally $1 billion richer. And on Thursday, a rare appearance at a Rose Garden event with his wife, where he sat quietly while she spoke.

**Melania Trump** (2:22)
Good afternoon, I heard you missed me. Here I am.

**Jon Favreau** (2:32)
She did hear that we missed her. Look at that happy couple so in love holding hands. What's their secret?

**Dan Pfeiffer** (2:39)
I don't know, it's just what are the odds that this incredibly heartwarming, not at all awkward photo op was scheduled this week in the middle of Natalie Harpgate.

**Jon Favreau** (2:47)
I'm sure it was a complete coincidence and usually Donald Trump shows up at events and sits quietly and doesn't speak.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (2:55)
Famous for that. That is.

**Jon Favreau** (2:57)
So the Jon Ossoff riff that kicked off a week of hysteria on the right, it began with the Senator saying that Trump doesn't want to do the job of being president, he wants to trade stocks and build his ballroom and travel with Natalie. Minus the actual travel part, I think this week proves his point.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (3:18)
Yeah. It is watching him this week. It's just a reminder that he is a very old, very stubborn man who's a complete narcissist.
We've been watching him for a very long time now, but even after watching Trump for all these years, it is still stunning to the degree that he cannot even pretend to give a shit about anyone or anything else other than the things at the top of his list, which happened to be helipads, ballrooms, and enriching himself.

**Jon Favreau** (3:46)
Obviously, the Natalie comments have just touched off the drama of the week, but that was the message of Ossoff's speech there. And I think why it was so effective is because everyone can look at Donald Trump in everything that he does. And it's like, well, he seems like he likes getting rich, he likes renovations, and other than that, he pops off and yells at Democrats and people who've crossed him in some way. And other than that, you don't see much of them. That's about it.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (4:15)
I guess the whole thing comes down to the fact that Natalie Harp is the one who controls all information that goes to the president, so maybe he's unaware of everything else that's happening in the world.

**Jon Favreau** (4:23)
Yes.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (4:24)
But just you would think that anyone who turned on a TV to some channel other than Fox News would see what everyone cares about, what everyone's worried about, what their political setting was, and they would try to do something to address it. Instead, he just keeps digging a deeper hole on a daily basis.

**Jon Favreau** (4:40)
And one thing we've been learning this week, and some of it had been reported in the past, is that other people in Trump's orbit and in the White House and in the federal government have been a little concerned at times that Natalie Harp is his main and sometimes only source of information, and that if you want him to see a briefing memo or a story or a tweet, you have to text Natalie and she'll print it out. Which makes the development that Ms Now reported just yesterday even more interesting and troubling.