Republicans are melting down after Jon Ossof commented on the president's strange relationship with his aide

Natalie Harp with Donald Trump on July 22, 2026.

In early 2024, while reporting a story on New York’s boisterous, controversial Young Republican Club, one of my sources told me they had a pretty direct line to Donald Trump himself.

At the time, Trump wasn’t president again — yet. But he was campaigning, and in order to get something in front of his eyes you had to first get the attention of someone else: his assistant and right-hand woman, Natalie Harp.

Harp, 35, is now at the center of a major media frenzy, as Democrats like Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff have seized upon her unusual relationship with her boss: part assistant, part hype-man, part gatekeeper. On Sunday night, Ossoff made a comment that many interpreted as an insinuation that Harp had a more personal relationship to the president.

“The president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks,” Ossoff said at a campaign event in Georgia. “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.”

Ossoff’s comments set off a firestorm both in Democratic circles and the GOP’s reactionary messaging apparatus.

“Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted on Monday morning. By Tuesday, the entire media ecosystem had weighed in — with some coming right out and saying what they thought Ossoff was implying in his joke, and detailing why it was out of bounds.

“Ossoff was clearly implying that Trump was having an affair with his staffer,” Megyn Kelly wrote on X. Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna called him a “sexist arrogant jerk.” Pundit Robby Starbuck wrote that “Ossoff is a vile coward for insinuating they’re having an affair.” The flood of backlash poured out of just about every conservative commentator you could think of.

The White House joined the fray after CNN posed a question about Harp to Trump, asking him to respond to Ossoff’s comments directly. “You mean Pee-Wee Herman?” Trump quipped in the moment, referring to Ossoff. His comms team went for a full broadside later online. “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question,” Trump’s rapid response account posted at CNN reporter Kristen Holmes. “They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”

Ossoff, meanwhile, tried to soften the blow of his joke, redirecting it — sort of — away from Harp herself to make it more of a comment on the president’s relationship to his staff in general. “I’ve heard this particular aide referred to as his security blanket,” he told Jen Psaki on MS NOW. “And I think we could say that about any number of the senior aides in the White House.”

But the damage was done, and it’s hard to believe Ossoff didn’t know exactly what he was doing. In recent years, some Democrats have occasionally flirted with the type of mud-slinging that Trump and his imitators became known for, but they’ve rarely landed a hit that provoked this much of a reaction.

“What a coward. Own your sexist joke, bro,” right-wing commentator Scott Jennings posted.

Harp’s history — and her relationship to the president — give some clues as to why the Republican beehive is so agitated.

Harp began her career in the public eye as an anchor for One America News, a right-wing propaganda outlet that was founded in 2013 and became something of a mouthpiece for the Trump administration and then the MAGA movement during the Biden administration. Democrats and liberal commentators have pointed out that Harp was often fawning over Trump during her segments.

While these clips have been used as more evidence that Trump and Harp have a strange dynamic, it’s hard to say that this kind of content is outside of the norm for OAN’s programming at the time. But that doesn’t mean Harp’s history with Trump isn’t strange — even by MAGA supplicant standards.

At the 2020 Republican National Convention, she said she was a bone cancer survivor and credited her survival to a “Right to Try” policy pushed by Trump in 2018 that allowed patients to use experimental drugs.

“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” Harp said at the RNC. “They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”

The Washington Post, however, notes that the drug Harp used was already approved by the FDA — which would have meant that the “Right to Try” law wouldn’t have applied.

Still, it’s clear that Harp feels a close personal connection to Trump. After her short stint at OAN, the Post cited her as a Trump employee as early as 2022. In 2024, The New York Times reported that Harp’s primary role on Trump’s staff was what other aides called “the human printer” — following Trump around with a battery powered printer so she could give him physical copies of social media posts, missives, text messages, and positive, often conspiratorial news stories. The Post story in 2022 also detailed her in this role, noting that other aides were “particularly distressed” by her access to and influence with the president.

“She is indicative of the people around him who just love him,” one anonymous adviser told the Post in 2022. “Love him too much.”

The Times’ reporting also noted that Harp’s esteem for Trump was particularly fervent, describing how she wrote him a series of what the newspaper called “devotional letters,” one of which said: “You are all that matters to me.” The Times described her running behind Trump’s golf cart, reading him social media posts and news articles. Following one of those instances, the Times reports that she wrote him another letter, apologizing for being “an embarrassment” while on the golf course in Scotland. “I want things to always be right between us,” she wrote. “I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).” Harp signed the letter, “With all my heart, Natalie.”

Harp’s family have acknowledged that her relationship to Trump is not that of a traditional staffer. In an interview with CNN on Tuesday night, Harp’s estranged brother Preston Harp said that “Since she was 16 she’s had an obsession with – she’s written letters to other presidents, let me put it that way,” Preston Harp said, mentioning “George Bush during the Iraq War” and that “her dream came true finally.”

These details are certainly odd, but so is basically everything about the particularities of Trump’s inner circle. Ossoff’s comment, however, likely came at least partially in response to another outlandish story that broke earlier this month.

On August 10, the Post reported that Trump had covertly switched planes during a trip to Turkey, hiding in an airline catering truck with a tiny group of aides in order to dodge a potential attack on Air Force One by Iranian proxies. The White House press corps and several key government figures — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio — stayed on board the “decoy plane.” Harp did not. She was reportedly in the food truck with Trump.

It’s impossible to know the exact nature of Harp’s relationship with Trump. Ossoff did not specifically mention an affair, though it’s hard to interpret his familiar comment as anything else — and the right-wing media is reacting to it as such, trying to take a moral high ground on behalf of a president who has, at least in civil court, been found liable for sexual abuse on at least one count, and routinely makes sexist comments toward female reporters and others.

Jesse Watters of Fox News was one of the only right-wing commentators to recognize the hypocrisy of bashing Ossoff’s comment while supporting Trump: “Am I fazed by this comment? No. Has Trump said so much worse, so much more sleazy things against other people? Yes. Have I defended those things? Absolutely. So, I’m not going to pretend to be all hot and bothered by it.”

Watters is an outlier, though. No matter what the charges, Trump will always have his protectors in the GOP, some more loyal than others. In recent years, Natalie Harp has been more loyal than anyone else.

Elon Musk posts incessantly about protecting Western civilization.

“She’s a traitor to the West.”

Elon Musk posted this on X on July 25 in response to a clip of Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, saying on CNBC that Musk propagates a “caricatured” image of Europe as a deteriorating, unlivable hell hole. Beddoes had recently interviewed Musk, challenging his views on Europe, and confronting him for supporting far-right politicians and parties from Germany to the UK. Beddoes never questioned the hallmarks of liberal democracy: free and fair elections, separation of powers, equal protection under the law, or human rights. But in Musk’s mind, her pushing back on his caricature of Europe as a continent colonized by immigrant invaders proved enough to make her a “traitor to the West.”

The idea of “saving the West” isn’t limited to the feverish online posting of the world’s richest man. If one surveys the conservative media landscape on any given day, the call to “rescue Western civilization” appears ubiquitous. For example, on August 5, 2026, the day after Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for Senate in Michigan, the civilizationist discourse popped up in every corner of the American right. Podcaster Benny Johnson called for more politicians willing to “fight for Western civilization.” Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Seminary, released a podcast interview titled “The Battle Western Civilization.” Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State, posted: “The Democratic Party is being taken over by anti-American candidates who hate the values that underpin Western civilization.”

Noah Rothman, senior writer at the National Review, posted in response to a video montage of Abdul El-Sayed: “This race isn’t just about tax rates, or health care, or immigration enforcement. It’s about more than politics now. This is a fight over America and whether the enemies of Western civilization are right.”

None of this even touches the civilizationist outrage many on the American right — including Musk — expressed over the casting of Black actors in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

Civilizationalist discourse isn’t a new summer trend. It’s surged since Trump’s second inauguration. In a July 2025 interview, Lara Trump even asked her father-in-law about his supposed nickname, the “bodyguard of Western civilization.”

I’ve spent the last two and a half years investigating the growing alliance among Protestant Reconstructionist Christians like Doug Wilson and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth; radical traditional Catholics like Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation and Vice President JD Vance; and Silicon Valley technocrats like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Curtis Yarvin. What’s become clear: “Saving Western civilization” is now the unifying rallying cry of the American right, surpassing Trump’s infamous “make America great again” slogan and even the Christian nationalist mantra of taking America back for God. There’s a reason for this change. As I argue in my new book American Caesar, the crusade to rescue Western civilization provides an umbrella discourse that unites tech reactionaries with traditional Catholics and extremist Protestants in a loose alliance against immigrants, non-Christians, the LGBTQ community, and anyone who criticizes the United States.

While extremist Christians and Silicon Valley technocrats often disagree on issues related to AI, surveillance, and family, they are aligned on the idea that saving Western civilization from external threats like Muslims and migrants and internal threats like antifa, trans people, and feminists is the paramount issue of our time. Even though Elon Musk is not religious, many Christian nationalists see him as an ally in saving Western civilization from the foreign and domestic vandals they believe threaten it. By couching their shared mission in civilizational, rather than religious terms, they can forge a loose coalition against the groups they perceive as common enemies and existential threats to “our way of life.”

As opposed to Christian nationalism or MAGA, civilizationalism also provides a horizontal plane that transcends the United States, including Europe in the effort to rescue civilization from both attacking barbarians and domestic enemies.

In many ways, the civilizationalist discourse emanating from every corner of the American right is an escalation of the Christian nationalist currents that have been center stage during the Trump era. As the scholars Yilmaz and Morieson argue, “Civilizationism is an idea which posits that the world and its peoples can be divided into several ‘civilizations’, most of them defined by religion.” Western civilizationalists render “Western” people as moral, rational, and outright superior to others based on their religious-cultural values. This escalates MAGA’s hallmark xenophobia and Christian nationalism because civilizationalist discourse posits that “non-Westerners” “belong to a foreign civilization with inferior values derived from an inferior religion.” In other words, they are inexorably less than “us” as a people, and therefore unassimilable. There’s no room here for legal migration, pluralism, or multiculturalism. Rather, we are left with a vision akin to Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations model, wherein different people groups across the world hold competing values that can never be cohered. Moreover, American citizens who promote “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” or “anti-capitalist” views are suspected of being linked to either Islamist, or communist foreign networks. They are a foreign enemy cosplaying as real Americans. The goal of civilizationism is isolationist purity. The strategy to achieve it? Civilizational warfare.

Thus, we arrive at a startling truth: When Christian nationalists and technocrats rally to “save Western civilization,” their efforts are not meant to shore up democratic institutions, reinvigorate civic norms surrounding free and fair elections, protect free speech, or defend free thought. When a Texas A&M professor was told he couldn’t teach Plato — the pre-eminent philosopher of ancient Greece and perhaps all of Western civilization (outside of Jesus) — without permission, there was no uproar. When books are banned, the civilizationalists don’t blink.

Their retrieval of Western virtue is not focused on the merits of Athenian democracy or the Roman Republic, much less the Enlightenment values of free choice, personal autonomy, or freedom from religious imposition and/or censorship. In this case, saving Western civilization doesn’t mean empowering We the People, it means rescuing the country from the “immoral elites” who have sold out our country to inferior foreigners; the domestic infidels who refuse to abide by the binary gender and sex norms that both technocrats like Musk and Christian nationalists like Vance and Hegseth prescribe.

If a pure society, rather than a free one, is what they are trying to save, we are left with an important question: Who is going to do the rescuing?

There has been plenty of extremism among Christian nationalists for decades. However, what we are witnessing now is frightening escalation to something more radical: the desire to replace We the People with an all-powerful leader to purify the United States — a Red Caesar, a Protestant Franco, an Appalachian Pinochet, an Unbound Executive, or a Tech Monarch. In other words, a second American Revolution, but this time to seat someone like a king, rather than to break away from one.

There is an abundance of evidence that Trump and his allies are trying to manifest something resonant with these models. Elon Musk’s implementation of DOGE early in Trump’s second term echoed the tech-dissident Curtis Yarvin’s notoriously monarchist ideals. When he took the helm of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency early in 2025, Musk began implementing a “hard reboot” of the government following Yarvin’s blueprint. Musk’s DOGE lieutenants openly claim Yarvin as their greatest philosophical inspiration for gutting federal agencies, laying off workers, and destroying the social safety net. One DOGE team member told The Washington Post that Yarvin represents “the most crisp articulation” of what DOGE is trying to achieve. Another said that “it’s an open secret that everyone in policymaking roles has read Yarvin,” and are using his authoritarian theory “to empower people on the ground to actually do stuff — even if they can’t admit it publicly.”

There is more evidence in the form of Trump’s defiance of the courts, particularly when it comes to his effort to rid the nation of the kind of external threats so often cited by Musk and his fellow guardians of civilization. An Associated Press review from May 2026 found that in 31 lawsuits his administration had “250 instances of noncompliance” in immigration cases, “from failing to return property to keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.”

The list goes on: The Trump administration kidnapped and imprisoned Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and took control of the country’s oil. Now, Marco Rubio is ruling the country from afar with no plan for elections any time soon. To date, Trump has not received congressional approval for the war with Iran, which has been ongoing since February. Trump tried to rename the Kennedy Center. He demolished the East Wing of the White House. And his former personal defense attorney, Todd Blanche, was just appointed head of the Department of Justice. Oh, lest I forget: Trump ignored the Constitution completely when he tried to deport U.S.-born Americans.

The move toward an American Caesar, in many respects, is no longer a Christian nationalist movement, at least not in the way we often think of it.

The dream of the right is no longer to restore a time when white Christianity went hand in hand with America; a restoration of the supposed pax Americana of the 1950s. The outlook now is more grim and more extreme.

In the face of demographic change, cultural progress, and global crises, Christian Reconstructionists, reactionary Catholics, and Silicon Valley magnates long to “save” Western civilization by replacing American democracy with a post-constitutional Caesar who will rule without the burden of checks and balances or the sharing of power in any meaningful way. Trump is doing everything he can to oblige them.

Bradley Onishi is author of American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America Into a Monarchy, on sale September 15 via Macmillan Publishers.

Donald Trump speaks during the re-scheduled White House Correspondents Dinner on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C.

If you want to get an inside view into Donald Trump’s accelerating, public detachment from reality, all you need to do is scroll through his posting diary on Truth Social. The president spent the weekend feverishly sharing a deluge of AI Slop about the Iran war, his critics, and his own self delusions.

The barrage began Sunday morning, when Trump shared an image of CNN host Kaitlan Collins edited to look like trangender influencer Dylan Mulvaney — a frequent target of right-wing attacks. The image was a reference to comments the president made during Friday night’s re-do of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was rescheduled from April after a gunman attempted to force entry into the venue.

“I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship,” Trump said during his remarks. “But then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.” The transphobic jab was a reference to a Bud Light influencer campaign Mulvaney participated in in 2023, which inspired a conservatives campaign to boycott the beer brand, and has continued to torment conservatives for the three years since it happened.

From there, the president continued to share AI-generated dribble intended to double down on many of the public figures he targeted in his speech at the dinner. One image spoofed musician Bruce Springsteen and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. There was also: Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Christie fighting over a slice of cheesecake. Comedians Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon as homeless beggars. Comedian Rosie O’Donell as an obsessive fan writing letters to the president from her home in Ireland.

Trump shared dozens of posts fantasizing about his military prowess, including an AI-generated movie posters lauding him as the “COSMIC COMMANDER: LEADERSHIP, DESTINY, BEYOND,” and “TRUMP X WASHINGTON: A TIME TRAVEL EPIC,” in which the president seemingly saves George Washington from falling off a cliff, Lion King style. He also shared an AI-generated “Strike on Kharg” imagining the U.S. military bombing Kharg Island, a critical hub for Iranian energy logistics in the Strait of Hormuz, and over a dozen other posts depicting Trump either commandeering imaginary Iranian oil tankers, blowing them up, or throwing AI-generated Iranians overboard.

The president has also continued to mock the backlash to his suggestions that he will run again in 2028 — in violation of the Constitution. He donned a “TRUMP 2028” hat during his Correspondent’s Dinner speech, and posted several digitally altered photos of himself wearing similar hats on social media.

By late Sunday night, Trump’s AI fever had calmed, and he returned to his usual text-based ramblings and Fox News live-posting, lauding Rep. Bandon Gill (R-Texas) for an appearance on Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy, to discuss former special counsel — and Trump revenge target — Jack Smith.

“The Deranged One stone cold lied before Congress, and worse. He destroyed many lives. Hopefully he will be treated accordingly,” Trump wrote of the prosecutor who indicted him on over 40 counts related to misconduct during his first presidency.

What can one learn from these bouts of boomer-posting, which have become more frequent as the president’s second term advances. The actual work of the presidency comes second to Trump’s obsessions with himself — be it renovating the White House to look more like the mutant baby of his Mar-a-Lago resort and his Manhattan apartment, throwing himself lavish MMA-themed birthday parties on the South Lawn, or profiting off the presidency. His approval among voters is abysmal, and his party’s hold on power is in jeopardy with the midterms looming. Reality is looking grim for Trump, but if generative AI has given MAGA anything, it’s an ability to visualize their delusions with a single prompt.

Zohran Mamdani and I have a serious beef. He is unrelenting. His attacks come from all sides, when I least expect them. Charm, good looks, quick wits — just a few of the attributes that have made him New York’s youngest mayor in a generation, as well as a national political figure with the power to shake up Congress and parlay with the president — are weapons in his capable hands. I feel their brunt now for one simple reason: I am a proud supporter of Chelsea Football Club.

“What got you into Chelsea — you love Clearlake Capital?” he asks me before the cameras have even started rolling in the historic foyer of Gracie Mansion for the Rolling Stone Interview. He is roasting the fact that my team is owned by a massive American private-equity firm that spent $1.5 billion on new players only to finish in 10th place in the English Premier League this season. The mayor supports Arsenal, a rival London team who finished first. He is equally disgusted with my support for England in the World Cup. “Brother, whyyyy?” he says, grimacing.

I knew these opinions would be contentious, and yet, I was not prepared for the verbal violence they would bring. I make noises of protest, jabbing at Arsenal’s longtime sponsorship by the dastardly Dubai-owned Emirates Airlines, blaming my allegiances on an English father. None of it works. The dimples on Mamdani’s cheeks are pointed at me like a double-barreled shotgun. He is grinning, grinning.

This process repeats multiple times over the course of our interview, whenever sports come up. I begin to understand what former Gov. Andrew Cuomo must have felt like on that debate stage last June, being skewered by a cheerful democratic socialist in a slim-cut suit. If Zohran Mamdani wants your head, his blade is ever sharp.

Since his decisive win over Cuomo in November of last year, Mamdani’s name has been on everyone’s lips. To the right, he is the bogeyman of their greatest fears, a brown man who believes in the radical redistribution of wealth and who they fear will institute Sharia law across the city. To the left, Mamdani is a sunny-dispositioned savior of New York’s perennial dysfunction and the catalyst for change in a national political system that has long been ruled by do-nothing centrist Democrats and an increasingly bloodthirsty far right. In the first six months of his administration, he hasn’t really behaved like either side’s caricature of him. Instead, he’s governed: cutting deals with the state government, City Council, and the powerful forces of New York’s political ecosystem. And in New York’s June primaries, he laid his political capital on the line by endorsing a slate of radical candidates for national and state office, knocking off several incumbents and making it clear that he was ready to spill blood within his own party.

Mamdani, then, is a rare force in modern Democratic politics. The charm is genuine, but it’s also a tool. The ideals are sincere, but they’re also a challenge. His staff, as far as I can tell, love him, but there’s no question of the power he now holds. On the campaign trail, he was “Z” — a state senator not so far removed from his days canvassing for other candidates. In victory, however, there are no more nicknames. They call him “Mayor.” Like it or not, everyone else has to do the same.

You’re coming off of a huge primary Election Day, where you backed several democratic socialist candidates with limited experience in public office. That was, by some measures, a big risk with your political capital, and you came away with a clean sweep. Take me into that Tuesday night. How did it compare to the night a year ago when you won your own primary?It was an incredible evening. To see what it meant to so many different parts of our city, to travel [to each of their events], to see that no matter what neighborhood or borough you called home, New Yorkers were hungry for change. It was incredible.

Did you have any moments of déjà vu?So many of the people who were at the heart of our campaign poured themselves into these races. It speaks to the fact that for so many of us, it was never about one office — it was about one movement for working people. I mean, Darializa [Avila Chevalier, who successfully primaried House Hispanic Caucus leader Adriano Espaillat], for example, she was a field lead on our [mayoral] campaign. As I was walking through her district, we met one of her field leads who told me that they were a canvasser trained by Darializa more than a year ago. That is what we are looking to build — a movement that, wherever it finds a fight for working people, it is there on the front lines.

Darializa is a former activist, and she was criticized during her campaign for past social media posts praising communist ideology, calling for the police to be abolished, and at one point tweeting “Fuck Kamala Harris.” For many people, she seems to be another bogeyman for what socialism will bring. What did you say to her about handling that backlash?I told her first that this only happens when there’s a chance that you win. And this is a reflection of the desperation that some are feeling in the face of what would be a new chapter in our city’s politics. For the vast majority of those who will be voting and who live in that district, this is not what they are concerned about. The people of New York’s [13th Congressional District] want to know that they have a representative that is willing to fight for them in the face of living in the most expensive city in the United States of America. It’s one of the poorest congressional districts across the country. So much of what we saw, the fearmongering, the blatant racism, it was an attempt to distract from the fact that Darializa would deliver on exactly that vision for those same working people.

You said the backbone of your movement has been people moving from field leads and activists to actually running for office. What advice do you give those who are thinking about making that transition?What I would say is that to run for something … at the heart of it has to be “Why are you doing this?” If the answer is “For working people,” then you will find that there are far more people who are ready to stand alongside you in that fight.

The issue of income inequality, the absence of affordability in people’s lives, it’s not unique to New York City. It is something that Americans are feeling across the country. They’re tired of a politics that has effectively been bankrupt, whether it’s politically bankrupt, morally bankrupt, or economic. And they’re looking for something that actually speaks to their needs.

This election cycle was the most political hardball we’ve seen you play. Several of the endorsements you made came against the wishes of the centrist block of the Democratic Party. Why did you think that this was the right time to take those shots?I made a promise a little more than a year ago to New Yorkers that I would use every tool at my disposal to deliver on an affordability agenda. When you are fighting for those who have been left behind, there will always be risk. It will always be easier to let that fight go.

I often think about the words that Tim Walz said about political capital. To paraphrase them: What is the use of having it if you’re not using it to help working people? That’s what came back to me in that moment. The consistency, the clarity, the conviction that characterized all three of these [congressional] races compelled me to make that decision.

That national battle between centrist and leftist Democrats has really come to center stage. Former DNC chair Jamie Harrison tweeted on election night: “I say this with no ill will or animosity. If you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination.” He didn’t mention you or any of these candidates by name, but it seems like a pretty pointed critique. How do you respond to that?Usually, if someone says, “This is not of any ill will or animosity,” what they’re about to say is characterized by ill will and animosity. But look, the question that I come back to is “What is the Democratic Party if not its voters?” If you look at what Democrats are voting for in New York 13, in New York 7, in New York 10, and you say that that is not representative of the party — it may not be representative of what has effectively become our party, which is something that’s run by well-paid consultants and big-money interests. But it is representative of what Democrats themselves want to see. It’s representative of the fact that in this country there is just one majority and that’s the working class.

Of course there’s a difference between campaign promises and what you can actually deliver. What has been a lot harder for you to achieve since coming into office than you thought it would be on the campaign trail?It’s often framed that campaigning is easy and governing is hard. In campaigning, however, you are asking people to believe in something despite their own experiences. What I appreciate about governing is that it comes with an opportunity to deliver.

Over the past six months, we’ve taken what was previously an intellectual question — “What does it look like to run a city with democratic socialism?” — and delivered on it. We have paved over 165,000 potholes. We have returned tens of millions of dollars to tenants who were taken advantage of by their landlords. We have put our city on a path to universal childcare, saving parents more than $20,000 a year. We’ve done all of this while delivering the lowest recorded number of murders and shootings in New York City history, and with a commitment to put our city on a path to the most ambitious affordable-housing agenda that we’ve seen in generations.

Right. But I’ve seen you get criticism even from some of your supporters more on the left as you’ve had to moderate some of these proposals and promises. Are there ever moments where you feel like you have to compromise in areas you didn’t want to?The job is difficult at its core. You are looking to deliver for eight and a half million people, many of whom have experienced politics as an act of disappointment with various stages. My North Star is thinking about those that have been priced out of this city. What I’ve found is there’s a lot more that’s possible to do than what we’ve been told in the past.

I am never going to say that this work is easy or it’s straightforward. It’s incredibly difficult. However, there is a way to deliver on what you ran on. It will take time. But what we’ve shown is that even in six months, you can put the city on a different path.

A lot of the ideas that you ran on would not have been so shocking to the political establishment in FDR’s era. Why do you think that those things are seen as political impossibilities now?For a long time, those kinds of ideas — what the Democratic Party can stand for, what it can fight for — could only be found in a history book. Think about the distillation of this vision into the four freedoms [FDR’s principles, taken from his State of the Union Address in 1941, that all Americans should live with the freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear]. If offered today, [the four freedoms] would be heard as a radical vision of this country, when in fact it’s very much grounded in why so many [Americans] are proud to be Democrats — why I’m proud to be a Democrat. It speaks to a recent history of our party becoming more a reflection of a consultant class and of special interests than a reflection of what working people need.

You say you’re proud to be a Democrat. Do you think that your movement can ever coexist with the centrist faction of the Democratic Party, or is this really an existential battle for where the party’s going to go?I think we all belong to the big tent that is the Democratic Party. The question in front of us is “Where do we want to go, and what do we want this party to be?” The Republicans have this seemingly limitless ambition for what it is that they want to accomplish, whereas we seem to be constructing an ever-lowering ceiling of possibility. In 2028, we have an opportunity to move beyond the current federal administration. That begs the question “To what?” I think that it is time to not only have a vision, but to deliver on that vision.

What we’re showing here in New York City is that it is possible to put working people back at the heart of our politics and then also deliver for them at the same time. Too often, New Yorkers have been asked to choose between their quality of life and the quality of the city’s ambition. It’s time to show that in fact both of these things can be fulfilled at once.

What does a national Democratic Party look like to you, ideally?It looks like a party that is asking itself the question of “What are working people struggling with?” and then answering that question with what they can do to make life easier. I believe that our politics has to go beyond an intellectual exercise and has to be something that is material. If we cannot describe our politics and how it helps people afford their rent, their groceries, their childcare, then it seems like a hobby that some people can afford to have.

A sentiment I’ve seen online a lot in reaction to your first six months in office is some version of “Turns out you can just do things.” What’s one accomplishment you’re proud of that wasn’t a stated campaign promise?On the first day of our administration after inauguration, I went to meet with a number of tenants who live in a building that is controlled by a real estate organization, where they have filed complaint after complaint after complaint. I went into one of the tenant’s homes and she showed me her bathroom, and it was just rust falling off the pipe, falling off the ceiling. I asked her how long she’d been living with this and then she turned around and she pointed to her son, and she said, “Longer than he’s been alive.” He was more than 20 years old.

We made the decision to file a lawsuit on behalf of those tenants. Just by virtue of filing that lawsuit, we got the next owner to agree to remedy all of the violations at that building and other buildings owned by that same real estate organization. That, to me, shows the worth of fighting because if you aren’t willing to fight, you will never be able to win.

But you need to enact those things systemically as well. As you know better than I do, NYCHA — the New York City Housing Authority, NYC’s public-housing agency — is one of the most complaint-written landlords in the city.Sometimes the systemic nature of an issue has been used to justify why you cannot do anything in the short term. We have heard many who have come forward and said, “NYCHA has $80 billion in capital needs. It’s a federal responsibility. We need the federal government to act.” All true. We also know that whether or not it’s a Democratic administration or a Republican administration, NYCHA has had those capital needs. If we are going to wait for D.C. before we take action, we are effectively leaving hundreds of thousands of public-housing residents on the hook for the amount of years that it will take for D.C. to finally remember those same tenants. We are going to put forward the resources that go beyond what the city has done before — we nearly doubled our city’s capital commitment to NYCHA.

Part of the reason that you face questions like this is because you’ve become the face of a movement in American politics. But when you become the face of something, you start becoming liable for everything that someone wants to pin on you. I’ve seen everything from the Charlie Kirk assassination to FIFA’s overturn of American player Folarin Balogun’s red card in the World Cup put on you. How do you decide which of those critiques you feel like you have a responsibility to respond to?If they affect working New Yorkers. There’s a difference between the discourse and what people in this city are concerned about.

You’re good at this.Thank you.

Everyone who has seen you, met you, interviewed you says the same thing — that you are a talented politician. Sometimes it’s not said as a compliment. What does being a good politician mean to you?I think it means delivering. For a long time, being a good politician has meant debating. [My administration] wants it to be material. If you knock on a New Yorker’s door right now and you ask them what they’re worried about, they’ll define it in terms of cost.

What do you judge yourself by? What are you privately worried that you’re not going to be able to deliver on?I often go back to why so many New Yorkers knocked on doors for our campaign. What brought them out to do that? That hope is a responsibility. If you share that with others, it’s also a duty to deliver on it.

For me, when we talk about 2,000 seats of free childcare for two-year-olds this year, 12,000 seats next year, a seat for every single two-year-old by the end of four years, I always want to make clear that that is not my achievement. It’s the achievement of everyone who walked up those six-floor walk-ups and knocked on door after door after door and told people that there was a world we could win where childcare didn’t have to be $20,000. I want to measure our administration in whether we delivered for both the person who was knocking and the one whose door was getting knocked on.

I’m curious about your upbringing, which was about as classically New York as you can get for someone who came here at the age of seven. How did that cultural upbringing shape your view of the world and your politics? Your musical references are everywhere, for instance.Some of my earliest memories are in New York City. I used to love going to Tower Records. I think it was on 66th and Broadway. And they would have just floors of just incredible numbers of CDs. I loved the Offspring at the time.

Classic. Classic of the era.The first album I was given was the clean version of Jay-Z’s The Blueprint. They used to sell bootleg CDs right outside of Tower Records, and that’s where I bought Eiffel 65’s seminal classic. A lot of people only know them for “Blue (Da Ba Dee).” “Too Much of Heaven,” great song.

What are you listening to now?Right now, I’ve been listening to a lot of Radio & Weasel, who are a duo from Uganda who were running the charts for a long, long time. I’ve also been listening to a Pakistani rapper named Shamoon Ismail, who I’ve listened to for a few years. If I’m feeling reflective, throw on some Kacey Musgraves.

New album was great.I’m still listening to Golden Hour.

It’s always funny hearing those cultural references coming from a guy who has made it a thing to pathologically wear a suit. Tell me about that style choice.I feel like an uncle who opens up the closet and it’s just the same outfit again and again and again. I mean, shout-out to the suits.

One of my pet peeves with politicians, and no offense, is the T-shirt over the collared shirt.Oof. I do that sometimes.

I know, I know. I’ve seen you do it, and it’s not a personal attack.I’m taking it like one.

And of course we know you love sports. What was your entry point to sports?I have to credit my uncle. He introduced me to Arsenal in the late Nineties, early 2000s. I was born in Uganda, in East Africa. Arsenal, I would argue, is the most supported team in Uganda. A lot of that has to do with the history of African talent on the team: Kanu, Lauren … Kolo Toure, Emmanuel Eboue, Alex Song … I’ll even name him even though I’m forever hurt by [him] — Emmanuel Adebayor.

My first World Cup memory is probably around ’98 as well — just falling in love with Zizou [France’s French-Algerian captain Zinedine Zidane]. I mean, what a player. The first time my dad ever let me be late for school was when France was playing Senegal [in the 2002 World Cup]. His love of academia had no chance against Pan-Africanism. We stayed home, watched Papa Bouba Diop score on Fabien Barthez. That’s one of my early memories.

How do you use that knowledge of sports to connect with people?I think there are a lot of people for whom sports are effectively their first language. When you speak to someone for whom English is clearly a second or third or fourth language, you’re in some ways speaking to a shadow of them. You’re missing the entirety of who this person is. And when you talk to someone about sports, whether it’s soccer or basketball, whatever else it may be, it’s as if the fullness of them is finally in view.

All right, the sports stuff was supposed to come at the end. We’ve got to talk about Trump. Your meeting with Trump at the White House was one of the most striking parts of the very beginning of your tenure as mayor. What’s your relationship now?The relationship is as it was. It’s built around New York City. For all of the many disagreements that the president and I have, we have one thing in common, which is a love of this place.

Do you feel like you have to appeal to Trump’s ego a little bit in those interactions to keep his sights off the city? I think the fear has been that what happened with ICE and the National Guard in places like Minneapolis or Los Angeles is going to come to New York City.I think I need to continue to be honest with the president, and that honesty is in places of disagreement. I’ve spoken to him directly about how I think of ICE as a cruel agency that does nothing to serve the interest of public safety. I’ve spoken about how I think it should be abolished.

What do you think about him constantly saying how handsome you are?Thank you?

We’ll take it, I guess. His second term has come down harder on other cities, but New York hasn’t escaped the ripple effects of what Trump has done.The cruelty of ICE is not an intellectual concern to our city. There are New Yorkers who’ve had their families split apart by this agency. I get texts on a regular basis from both people that I know and those that I’ve never spoken to before, asking me for help.

Whether we’re speaking about health care or we’re speaking about SNAP, federal policy is making it harder for people to afford to live in the city. And we’re trying to do everything we can to fight back against the effect of those cuts. And yet, there is a limit to what a city can do in the face of federal policy that is looking to decimate these programs. It’s going to have a real impact on an untold number of New Yorkers across the five boroughs.

The other national issue that has become increasingly relevant for every politician in this country is Israel and Gaza. Why do you think that it’s important for New York’s mayor to have a clearly defined position on that subject?My politics is one that has no exception. When I’m speaking about the importance of dignity and international law and human rights, I speak about that with an application to everyone. For a long time, what we’ve seen is a willingness to exempt Palestinians from those ideals. The more willing you are to cut anyone out of a conviction, the more likely you are to lose that conviction altogether.

Where did you develop those convictions?From a young age, if I could see a contradiction between that which we said we believed and that which we were willing to do, it was something that I just couldn’t let go. The more you’re in politics, the more you’re told this is just simply how it is. And to me, I just never think that’s a good enough answer.

I bring it up because it’s really one of the most divisive issues of our time, and it’s also one that has brought you some of the most intense criticism — in your personal life, too. Your wife, the artist Rama Duwaji, has also been criticized over her views on Israel and Gaza. How have you two adjusted to that?It is hard to prepare for death threats. It is hard to prepare for getting a phone call from a district attorney telling you that someone from another state is going to be charged for what they have said and hoped to do about you. When you are willing to speak up for all people, there are consequences that come from it. It’s obviously at a different scale now that I sit in front of you as the mayor. But even when I was an assembly member and I would speak about how it’s unacceptable that we’re sending billions of dollars to kill innocent Palestinians, I would receive voicemails that threatened many of the same things.

I’ve come to accept it as part of the work that I do. What will always be very difficult to accept is what it means for the people that I love. You hear politicians speak about it, and it initially reads as if it’s a cliché. When you start to live it, you fully understand the weight of what this work does to those that you love and those around you. It transforms everyone’s life.

As we’re speaking on July 6, I want to address the elephant in the room: Taylor Swift’s wedding, which happened two days ago. How long did you know that she was planning a big event in the city?We had some indication that there would be a permit application coming in, but it wasn’t until right before the wedding that that permit was actually submitted.

So she was last minute.In terms of what the city had to respond to, that application came in just before the wedding. But our responsibility is also to plan for any eventuality and to make sure that we’re ready to respond to it.

You get any feedback from the various agencies involved?Generally, I think the city services acquitted themselves very well.

There you go. So that’s the—I thought you were asking me how the attendees — whether they had a good time. I was like, “I have no idea.”

Well, I was going to ask if you were invited.No.

Yeah, too bad. Her loss.[Laughs.] No. I’m fine.

Carroll arriving at Manhattan federal court on May 9, 2023

E. Jean Carroll has finally received the $5.6 million in damages she was awarded after a jury found President Donald Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against her.

According to The New York Times, the money has been sitting in escrow as Trump appealed the ruling. After the Supreme Court rebuffed Trump’s final effort, the judge overseeing Carroll’s case ordered the money to be released last week. Court records updated Tuesday (July 14) confirmed that the money was disbursed to Carroll last week.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said she was “pleased to report that [Carroll] has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.” Lawyers for Trump did not immediately return a request for comment.

Trump was found liable in a 2023 civil trial, which Trump did not attend, related to Carroll’s accusation that Trump attacked her in 1996 in a department-store dressing room. She was able to sue Trump when New York opened up a window for survivors of sexual abuse to file suits after the statute of limitations.

Carroll, now 82, alleged Trump had defamed her after she published her account of what happened in a 2019 memoir. The verdict led to her being awarded $5 million, which has grown with interest. The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided that the verdict should stand, which paved the way to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s decision this week.

A rep for Trump did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment. A rep for Carroll said neither the legal team nor Carroll could comment at this time beyond the legal filings.

Carroll told the jury in 2023 that what began as a friendly encounter at a department store turned scary. Trump said he never met Carroll and called her “not my type” in an interview.

In a separate matter, Trump is appealing another judgment of $83 million due to Carroll for defamation, the result of a 2024 Manhattan trial where Judge Kaplan instructed the jury to accept the previous jury’s decision and determine what Trump owed for comments made during his presidency. The president’s lawyers claimed that blocked them from defending him. They are appealing, and the Department of Justice is reportedly pushing the Supreme Court to make the federal government the liable party in the matter.

In Ask E. Jean, a documentary released this past spring, Carroll talked about suing Trump. “He called me a liar, and I couldn’t let it stand,” she said.

This story was updated July 14 after court records confirmed the damages had been disbursed to Carroll.

A banner with a portrait of Donald Trump is displayed on the front of the U.S. Department of Labor, on May 30, 2026 in Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump’s favorite thing about America is that he lives in it. It’s hard to point to a president that wasn’t self-absorbed, of course — Obama had an ego on him, as well — but “President DJT,” as he signs his tweets, takes personal pride to a new level.

Trump has put his personal stamp on every American institution within his reach, and the celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary, known confusingly as the semiquincentennial, is no exception. Instead of a celebration of the country, Trump’s “Freedom 250” celebrations honor a particular vision of America — one set by one man, organized largely to boost his ego and flex his power over our political system and way of life.

Trump’s co-option of the semiquincentennial has taken many forms — slow and gradual ones like the subtle rebranding of the event, and bizarre, brazen ones like placing his name and likeness on new U.S. passports, coins, and other items. It’s a fitting demonstration of the current state of America: at the end of its imperial rope, a society that has been degraded so far by its own excesses that the Founding Fathers would barely recognize it now.

Here are some of the ways Trump made our country’s 250th birthday all about himself.

You need time to plan a good party. In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the nation began looking ahead toward the 250th anniversary celebrations. Congress established a commission that would theoretically oversee planning of the festivities a decade in advance, to ensure that everything went well regardless of who was in power.

And then Trump happened. In 2025, upon his return to the White House, Trump effectively neutered America 250, and created his own party planning committee: Freedom 250. Where America 250 was supposed to be nonpartisan, Freedom 250 is Trumpian, stuffed with allies of the president and focused on projects that reflect the presidents’ personal style. To top it all off, the funds originally allocated to America 250 have largely been diverted to Trump’s commission, which is not subject to the same oversight and appropriations restrictions as the original group.

Trump kicked off the American 250 celebrations not in the month of July, when the actual semiquincentennial falls, but in the middle of June. Specifically, he picked the weekend of June 14, his 80th birthday, to really go all out, hosting a unique Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the grounds of the White House. The event, according to the UFC, was a massive success — they certainly sold enough ads around it — but it was profound how little that had to do with the actual fights themselves. Sure, there was a shock upset when Justin Gaethje beat the Spanish phenom Ilia Topuria, but the real star on display was Donald Trump himself.

Trump has spent much of his second term obsessing over branding, particularly putting his name and face on every piece of public property he could get his hands on. If seeing Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center or his face on the Department of Interior wasn’t enough, Trump wants to make sure you can’t escape him — even if you leave the country.

In order to commemorate the 250th, the president ordered the creation of 40,000 special edition passports featuring the image of a glaring Trump in front of the Declaration of Independence. An image which — according to Trump — conveys the message, ‘Welcome, but be good.”

One of the nation’s greatest treasures are its beautiful landscapes and natural environmental diversity. Amber waves of grain, purple mountains’ majesty, you know the song. One of the ways Americans can enjoy the natural splendor of the country is through its national parks, and the National Parks Service offers a slate of passes for locals and travelers looking to enjoy public lands. The passes have historically featured photos of wildlife or famous American landmarks. But this is Trump’s America, and on the semiquincentennial he wants you to reflect not on the wild beauty that marked these lands centuries before the settlers, and will likely outlast the nation, but on himself.

To add insult to injury, Trump also has been raiding the coffers of the National Parks Service to fund a series of vanity projects for himself. A New York Times report found that nearly $60 million in Park pass revenue was going directly towards Trump’s repairs to Washington, D.C.’s ornamental fountains, and another $7 million is funding the disastrous Reflecting Pool renovation. The administration is being sued over it, but outdoorsmen across the country have already found themselves carrying Trump around in their wallets, all so he can freshen up the finishes on some of D.C.’s ceremonial hardware.

If Trump’s favorite thing in the world is solid gold, his second favorite is cash money. Before becoming president and adopting “Y.M.C.A.” as his de-facto anthem, Trump’s theme song was quite literally “For the Love of Money” by The O’Jays.

These days, Trump has a lot more power than when he was on The Apprentice, and he wants to put his face on America’s currency. The Trump administration and the U.S. treasury proposed issuing a 250th anniversary $250 dollar bill featuring not a dead pv resident, but the very much still alive Donald Trump.

It’s actually against the law to put a living politician on currency. It would require an act of Congress to make an exception for Trump and, sure enough, Republicans have introduced legislation to get his face onto a $250 bill — even though it stands almost no chance of passing.

OK, so maybe a $250 bill isn’t in the cards, but you know what the mint is great at? Commemorative coins! The U.S. treasury did approve a design for a 24-karat gold coin bearing Trump’s presidential portrait on the front, and a bald eagle on the reverse. The size and worth of the coin have not yet been announced..

The regional musical headliner or aging country star is a vital part of most great fairs, and Trump certainly tried to make his national celebration the same. Unfortunately, he failed, as star after star pulled out when it became clear that Trump was relentlessly politicizing their performances. Instead, Trump did what he always does: took the spotlight himself. Instead of seeing, say, Martina McBride or … Vanilla Ice, for some reason, audiences instead were treated to, and you need to read this full quote by Trump himself, “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!”

Incredible stuff, Mr. President. Bars worthy of Vanilla Ice, indeed.

You may have noticed a pattern at this point: Trump likes seeing his own face. Perhaps he is psychologically trapped in the image like Narcissus, or pulling a reverse Dorian Grey in which the more portraits of himself he puts up looking 20 years younger, the older he looks in person. Trump has been hanging banners of himself on buildings across the capital, including on the Department of the Interior, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Labor. Many of the “America 250” banners are placed alongside images of other famed presidents like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. It’s just another way Trump is trying to associate himself with the idea of American greatness. If the anemic crowds in Washington, D.C., this week are any indication, the effort is falling flat.