Dear Everybody:

The big news today is that even though the world is falling apart, Trump called reporters to the White House to watch him sign his name on the granite of the new helipad on the South Lawn, which is still under construction, and then give a 30-minute lecture on the granite. (And no, I am not exaggerating.)

–Trump: “You will never see a crack in this granite. This granite has a million-year life. It’s a very strong stone. It will never break. it will never leak. It’s 35,000 pounds per square inch…That stone–if you took a hammer and you started hammering right now, all day long, you would not see where you’ve hit it, I don’t care how strong you are. So in ten years, if you see a crack, you’ll say, well, Trump just said you’ll never see a crack. You’ll never see a crack on this granite.” (Huh???)

–He signed his name to the back of a granite slab being carved into a giant eagle’s head, the centerpiece of the new helipad’s presidential seal. The back of the slab, the side that will face the ground, already had his name carved into it.

–Dem Senator Mark Warner: “Trump is charging taxpayers an extra $875,000 just to speed up construction of his private White House helipad.” (He wants it done in time for President Xi’s visit from China in September.)

–And, according to aviation experts, the new helipad might be more dangerous than the old one, where the helicopters landed on grass because grass has some give and granite doesn’t.

–Trump also praised the new grass which had to be put in after the helipad construction tore it up: “It has a lot of good ingredients. If you’re grass, you’re very happy.”

–He talked about the new White House flagpoles: “I’m good at flagpoles.”

–CNN Kasie Hunt: “32 minutes in a presidential day is an enormously long amount of time. It doesn’t feel like it. You can easily waste 32 minutes on Instagram like the rest of us, but he’s running the country.”

–buddhistMonkey: “Donald Trump is doing many things to the country, but running it isn’t one of them.”

–Groucho Marx: “He may talk like an idiot and look like an idiot. But don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”

The Natalie Harp thing is still going strong:

–Virtually everyone on the right has now weighed in to trash Ossoff and act outraged, outraged, do you hear? on Natalie Harp’s behalf, from Jack Posobiec–“God bless Natalie Harp!” to Megyn Kelly–“Ossoff was clearly implying that Trump is having an affair with his staffer”–and Liz Harrington–“Sick freak who never should have been in the Senate. Stolen seat.”

–Probably my favorite was Mercedes Schlapp’s comment: “I don’t think any woman would want to travel with Ossoff.” (In case you don’t know who Mercedes Schlapp is, she’s the wife of Matt Schlapp, who runs CPAC and who has been repeatedly sued by young male staffers who say Schlapp sexually assaulted them. People who live in glass houses…)

–Niles Frankes: “I don’t know if it was the point, but man, Ossoff sure has flabbered the gasts of an entire administration and right-wing media ecosystem.”

–Conor Rogers: “None of us said sleeping around. We just said Natalie, and they all freaked out and said, ‘There’s no affair!’”

–Sundae Gurl: “One Ossoff joke produced more coordinated deployment than most NATO exercises.”

–kryttos: “Very telling. We should pull on this thread more. It’s absolutely something huge.”

–Jeff Tiedrich; “Congratulations, stupids, for putting Diaper Nurse Natalie on the map. If the outrage machine had simply ignored Ossoff’s remark and let it pass without comment, it would have been a non-story. No one would have noticed it. Natalie Harp wasn’t part of the national conversation. The average American had no idea she existed, much less that she was some member of Dear Leader’s inner circle, but now, thanks to those histrionic howler-monkeys who have no idea what it means to shut the fuck up, everyone and their sister knows that Donny has befriended some weird stalker lady half his age, who carries around his diaper bag. Come on, that shit is irresistible. Now everyone’s paying attention.”

The fact that there is all this attention on Harp means that reporters are now digging–and finding out ever more damning stuff about her:

–During Trump’s criminal trial, when a gag order limited what Trump could say about witnesses in the case, Harp offered to post his attacks under her own name. His lawyers were shocked to hear her say, “I’ll go to prison in his place.”

–Harp is a conservative Christian who was homeschooled and went to Liberty University. When she worked on the OAN network, she ended every broadcast with a Bible verse–or a Trump quote, which she treated in exactly the same way she did the Bible verses.

–Harp’s brother says she has always been infatuated with presidents and that she wrote to several of them, including George Bush, but none ever answered her–until Trump.

–They keep calling her Trump’s “staffer” and “aide,” but it’s not clear that she has any official position at all and/or any security clearance, even though she’s seeing all of Trump’s correspondence and papers.

–Jonathan V. Last: “The President of the United States has an in-house stalker, and he relies on this unhinged woman to an extent that is both hilarious and terrifying.”

–Trump calls her “Nathalie,” using the French pronunciation. He told staffers that Natalie was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids. “All of you will go off and make money. She’ll never leave me.”

–Harp is the one who was responsible both for the AI picture of Trump as Jesus laying hands on sick people–and the one portraying the Obamas as apes.

–She frequently feeds him articles from neo-fascist websites and AI pictures from far-right-wing podcasters.

–When Trump was asked about the comment by reporters, he said, “Who said this?” Reporter: “Jon Ossoff.” Trump: “Oh, you mean Peewee Herman?” He then went on to say, “I would rather do other things,” and went straight to talking about building his ballroom.” (Which would seem to validate the comment. He just ignored the Natalie Harp part.)

And some more insights on what’s really going on:

–Amanda Marcotte: “Some have speculated that given Trump’s long history of chronic adultery, there might be something more to the arrangement. Others, pointing to Trump’s strange gait and prominent backside, which is often seen to have an odd shape, wonder if he might be forced to wear a medical device or garments. The expanding size of the bag Harp lugs around isn’t helping dissuade rumors that nursing duties are an important part of her job. Whatever the case, the rumors have served to draw more attention to Trump’s age. But just the fact that he requires a woman to linger around him all the time, ready to express her devotion and that of her most ardent followers, isn’t a great look…whatever the extent of Natalie Harp’s duties, it seems undeniable that she is there to keep the temperamental president calm by distracting him from his own failures with words of praise. That he needs this is a sign of profound weakness. Stable adults do not need full-time babysitters…having a babysitter makes the 80-year-old President look older and weaker than he already is.”

–Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo: “What folks miss is MAGA doesn’t care if people think Trump cheated for the 1900th time. What worries them is the image of an 80-year-old man wildly dependent on a clinically fangirl-ish 30-something who he appears to use as a kind of human emotional support blanket as his faculties and political power fades.”

–Ron Filipkowski: “Jon Ossoff’s comment about Harp was three days ago. If this was so horrible, why hasn’t Trump made a single post about it in response? The man who comments about everything has nothing to say about this. What does that tell you?”

I thought the most interesting take on this came from rugbymom, who talked about where the real danger from Natalie Harp lies:

–rugbymom: “I frankly don’t care about providing POTUS with emotional support, or who’s rubbing his back or whatever, or being his personal care attendant. I don’t care if it’s sexual. What I very much care about is her active role in both feeding him far-right autocratic self-aggrandizing stuff like all those AI images, and then pumping those out on social media, and in transcribing his oral rants into Truth Social posts that upend US foreign and domestic policy–the latest being the South Korea joint exercises. She’s at least a co-active participant in creation of the monarchical highly-disruptive Mad King. And it’s clear that the two of them have isolated from any guard rails–the posts don’t get reviewed by Susie Wiles, or anyone else in the foreign policy/military policy/diplomatic realm, or pretty much anyone else. And without her, I suspect he’d be quickly revealed as incoherent and incompetent.”

The episode has also put more attention on Jon Ossoff and what he’s been saying about Trump and his administration:

–Ossoff: “They made you pay more for everything and took us to a war on lies, and spent most of last year trying to cover up for the world’s most famous pedophile while the crook President and his crook family raked in billions while your tax dollars were put to work funding Trump’s businesses.” (Note: Wouldn’t you think calling Trump a crook and a pedophile would cause some outrage, too? But no, the only thing they’re apoplectic about is Natalie Harp.)

–consensus-reality: “Ossoff uses sharp knives to carve out the truth. But if you notice, he cuts through and sticks to the facts. He never said anything about an affair, he simply said Trump travels with Natalie. MAGA fell into that trap by adding on the rest. Well played, Jon.”

–Sarah Longwell: “Keep talking about Ossoff. he will cash the checks of the attention economy all day long.”

In economic news:

–According to the New York Times, there’s more bad news on the economic front. Bond sell-off borrowing costs have risen to their highest level since 2007.

–Carl Quintanalla: “You are on a bus called the 30-year bond, and there is a cliff coming, but you don’t know if it is 100 meters away or 100 miles away. You are hoping you can get off the bus before it crashes.”

–It’s been eighteen days since the US Treasury undertook an all-hands-on-deck bailout of the yen. The intervention has now been completely wiped out and the Japanese are going to start considering liquidating US Treasuries to get the situation under control.

In Iran war news:

–Trump: “Right now I think the situation is so good.”

–Trump: “We have possession, complete control of the Strait. I mean outside of nuisance value, and there is nuisance value when they shoot a drone every once in a while, and not everybody’s going to come through, but they come through.”

–Ron Filipkowski: “Trump is blowing through our Strategic Oil Reserve like the money he inherited from his dad.”

–George Conway: “We are watching in real time the biggest fuck-up by any President in the history of the United States.

In other They’re All Perverts news:

–Former GOP state legislator in Florida and good friend of Ron Desantis, Mike Caruso, has been arrested on charges of child sexual abuse. He is accused of sexually assaulting his own grandson. The boy said Caruso exposed himself, fondled the boy’s genitals, and made him perform oral sex on him on a family vacation.

–This isn’t the first time he’s been accused. His daughter had previously accused him of sexual assault. His ex-wife also accused him of sexually assaulting a child in her divorce filing.

–Old Uncle Dave: “I’ve yet to hear of any liberal atheists getting busted for molesting children.”

In They’re All Morons news:

–Lindsey Graham’s sister, who Trump appointed to replace him in Congress and who is currently running for Graham’s seat, said, “There’s 50 million people in South Carolina.” (Note: There are 5.5 million.)

–Head of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin: “Trump’s approval rating is through the roof.”

–Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy on why he forbade his daughter from going to Harvard: “Me and Mom can say no. Harvard is out of the question because it’s against Catholic values, and academics there have professionalized figuring out how they can take young girls and corrupt their minds.”

–Minnesota’s GOP state auditor candidate, Scott Jensen, complained that “auditors are getting hung up on numbers.”

–The right-wing Daily Wire’s host Matt Walsh decided to wade in where angels fear to tread and talk about (for some unknown reason) post-partum depression: “A lot of people aren’t going to want to hear this, but much of the ‘depression’ that parents (and not just moms) suffer after childbirth is due not so much to hormones, but to the fact that children, especially babies, are demanding and difficult and require us to subordinate our own needs and desires for their sake. The more selfish you are, the more of an adjustment it’s going to be.” (Note: Post-partum depression is a real and serious condition which can result in self-harm and/or harm of a woman’s baby.)

–It was so bad that the Daily Wire’s founder, Ben Shapiro, had to leap in to say, “For any men, and a few women, who are saying that postpartum depression is somehow lack of willpower or that postpartum psychosis doesn’t cause people to do violent things, or that postpartum depression is because of the selfishness of modern women or something, please, please, please, please stop being a moron.”

–Abraham Lincoln: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.”

In historical news:

–Today is Coco Chanel’s birthday. Born in 1883, she revolutionized women’s fashions, taking them from Edwardian hobble skirts and huge hats to clothes that were comfortable, sporty, and still look totally modern. (To know just how modern, you have to compare them to what was being worn only ten years before–think Victorian-style houses versus Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture.)

–Among the many fashions she’s famous for are the striped sailor’s jersey, bell-bottom pants, espadrilles, and the Chanel suit, a simple tweed suit with a cardigan jacket and pleated skirt that women still wear today, but probably her most famous fashion breakthrough was her invention of “the little black dress” for evening, which was devastating then and devastating when Audrey Hepburn wore it in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, and is still considered a necessary item of every fashionable woman’s wardrobe.

–But none of that is what she’s best-known for. That would be her perfume, Chanel #5, which was the first modern perfume and which still sells for $120 dollars a bottle.

–She wasn’t just a clothes designer. Her fashions and handbags (the shoulder-strap bag that left women’s hands free) and fragrances all helped free women to work, play, and do whatever they wanted in the modern world that was just being created in the 1920s.

In literary news:

–For those of you who think, like I do, that heaven is a library, you need to see these gorgeous photos of Trinity Library in Dublin and the art installation “Gaia:”

Gaia

In other news:

–After railing against mail-in voting and repeatedly calling it a fraud, Trump voted by mail in the Florida primary.

–Russia has apparently built ten secret drone bases within striking distance of NATO, including Warsaw.

–A whistleblower complaint against the DOJ and HHS says that Trump’s claims of antisemitism in universities was nothing but an illegal shakedown. In its complaint against Harvard, the DOJ claimed a professor of Hebrew was forced to convert to Christianity. In 1725.

In good news:

–A US district court judge ruled that the Shenandoah County School Board violated federal civil rights laws by reinstating Confederate names to 12 schools. It ordered the board to immediately remove the names.

–The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a South Carolina law which only allowed voters to vote absentee if they were over the age of 65 or fell into several other limited categories, ruling that it violated the 26th Amendment.

–Trump just lost another case in his attempt to get control of state voter rolls. This is the 23rd case he has lost.

Best comment of the day, from Heather Delaney Reese: “…here is the thing Trump does not want us to see. He is making these threats and attacks because he is scared…the walls are closing in, and the midterms are right around the corner. He can feel it, and men like him do not get quieter when they lose control. They get louder, and they get more reckless. Nixon got louder, too, and we know how that ended. We should expect the same escalation here, and we should prepare for it, but we should also see it for what it is. The flailing of a man who knows the ground is shifting beneath him. Regimes on the right side of history do not come for our words when they feel secure. They come for our words because they know what happens when enough of us keep using them.”

Keep calm and carry on,

Connie Willis