… Nobody is watching Sean Duffy’s Great American Road Trip show, which he filmed with his family over the course of 7 months while serving as Transportation Secretary. The 6 episodes of the YouTube show premiered yesterday and only had a total of just over 5K views combined after 24 hours.
… CNN: “The long-awaited ‘Great American Road Trip’ reality show from the Dept of Transportation starring Secretary Sean Duffy and his family has finally premiered after months of delays. The series follows Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, a co-host of Fox and Friends, and their 9 children through 7 states.”
… “The 6-episode series was published on YouTube. It was originally planned to premiere in June, ahead of the July 4 celebration, but was delayed. All 6 episodes are now available on the Dept of Transportation YouTube page. Each episode is about 30 minutes long.”
… “The first follows the Duffy family to Philadelphia, in an episode titled, ‘Where America Began.’ The Duffy’s see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. They end the trip sprinting up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, also known as the ‘Rocky Steps,’ from the 1976 film with Sylvester Stallone.”
… NOTUS: “After 4 female press secretaries during his two terms, Trump has told close advisers he would prefer a man to fill Karoline Leavitt’s position. Trump has signaled interest in Scott Jennings, a conservative media pundit who has been widely reported to be among those being considered for the position. Trump, however, is not quite sold on the idea.”
… “Other men have also been floated for the role, including Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary under George W. Bush. There’s also another option the president may consider. A person close to the WH predicted that all of the attention on the president’s close aide Natalie Harp could catapult her into the position.”
… Source: “She was on OANN. The media is going to make her press secretary.”
… MS NOW: “Trump’s closest aide, Natalie Harp, declined multiple times over more than a year to seek a routine security clearance normally obtained by West Wing staffers to work at the WH. Sources said Harp’s reasoning for declining to complete the process was unknown. After concerns mounted among the WH counsel’s office and security officials, the president himself intervened, and Harp in recent months filled out the forms.”
… “The lack of a security clearance is one of several red flags raised about Harp internally by Trump’s top aides since he returned to the WH. Harp operates unusually close to the president and filters much of the information Trump sees on a daily basis, and that proximity has spurred frustration inside the West Wing. One national security official voiced concern that Harp’s proximity to the president gives her access to the most sensitive info around Trump, more than nearly all other senior WH officials.”
… “Since joining the president’s orbit ahead of his 2024 presidential campaign, Harp has emerged as a key gatekeeper to the commander in chief. She is known to deliver to the president troves of printouts, including favorable coverage, positive poll numbers from questionable sources and messages from Trump confidants — and those who want to be — trying to get his attention.”
… Source: “Harp plays into the less productive and more troublesome parts of his nature, putting things in front of him that aren’t vetted.”
… Daily Mail: “Natalie Harp spent the summer of 2023 sleeping in the women’s locker room at Trump’s Bedminster golf club so she could remain close to him. She had initially secured a maid’s room but moved into the locker room because it was closer to the main house and allowed her to respond more quickly whenever Trump called.”
… “During the campaign, Melania Trump once stumbled upon Harp late at night inside Trump’s private quarters at Mar-a-Lago, an area typically off-limits to anyone outside the family. Harp was reportedly delivering documents to Trump that she did not want to wait until morning to hand over.”
… Just a late night “document delivery” to the private quarters.
… Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) on MS NOW:
“It’s been amazing to watch this WH melt down over this all week. And about Natalie Harp, these WH staffers are adults, public officials paid by the taxpayer, with immense power in positions of public trust. And whether it’s Harp printing out Trump’s daily dose of delusion and flattery, or Peter Navarro steering taxpayer-funded loans to Trump family investments, or Pete Hegseth deluding the president daily into deepening this quagmire in the Middle East, no one cares about their feelings.”
“The sailors on the Lincoln are fighting his war, a war based on lies, while he plays with his new ballroom, flies around on a jet given to him by a foreign prince, and retreats into this circle of sycophantic aides who tell him every day what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear.”
Q - “There are people out there who believe that you are deliberately trying to carve out these little bites that will specifically provoke Trump. Is that what you’re doing? Ossoff: I’m trying to make sure that folks in GA know the truth about this admin. And apparently in the WH, the truth hurts.”
… Tomorrow is the deadline for the Supreme Court to intervene on the ballroom or construction must be halted based on a prior court order if they choose not to take the case.
… Trump’s Freedom Grand Prix car race is in DC this weekend. Newsmax brought on INDYCAR President Doug Boles to preview the event taking place on the streets of DC:
“We had to weld down 200 manhole covers to get ready for this and obviously take out some of the street lights.”
Q - “How have you had to adjust the race to be held on a city street? Boles: There’s 7 corners, 6 of them are 90 degrees. It’s gonna be very fast. It’s gonna be hard to pass here, there’s gonna be a bit of carnage on this because everyone wants to win this race.”
… WH Director of Protocol Monica Crowley: “We’re gonna have 25 indy cars flying around the nation’s iconic streets, going upward of 180 to 190 miles per hour!”
… NYT: “There has never been a Pentagon spouse quite like Jennifer Hegseth. In May she was in camouflage shorts and a sweat-drenched T-shirt that said ‘This Is War’ working out with sailors, Marines and her husband, Pete Hegseth, on the deck of the USSS Boxer in Singapore.”
… “In June she and 6 of the couple’s 7 children accompanied Hegseth to the D-Day commemoration in Normandy, where a DOD promo video with a swelling, cinematic soundtrack captured husband and wife walking arm in arm on Omaha Beach. The imagery seemed to cast her as the first lady of the Pentagon.”
… “Last year Washington got a different view when she was included in a group Signal chat in which Hegseth shared attack plans for US warplanes targeting the Houthis in Yemen. Mrs. Hegseth was for years Mr. Hegseth’s producer at Fox as he built a broadcast career.
… Now, 7 years into their marriage, she is his most influential adviser and his de facto producer at the Pentagon. She has prepped him for appearances, sat in on his meetings with journalists, interviewed potential members of his staff and brainstormed ideas for DOD videos he - and sometimes she - appears in.”
… John Ullyot, who left the Pentagon as chief spokesman after 3 months working under Hegseth: “It’s bonkers that a defense secretary would involve his wife in his sensitive official duties, including sharing details of an impending military operation, and face zero consequences. Any president deserves better judgment from his national security leaders.”
… Sen. Chris Coons, a senior Dem on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “This is not normal. Secretary Hegseth has one of the highest levels of classification access. He can’t just hand that to his wife and say, ‘Here, honey, hold my beer, and hold my classified information.’”
… WSJ: “The elimination of a futuristic drone battalion is part of a broader ‘back-to-basics’ approach ordered up by Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the acting chief of staff of the Army who is closely aligned with Pete Hegseth. The battalion was a signature initiative of LaNeve’s predecessor, Gen. Randy George, whom Hegseth ousted in April.”
… Cool, cool. We are going back to a military prepared to fight 20th century wars. What could go wrong?
… WaPo: “A FL school board that was at the epicenter of national debates over covid mask mandates and book bans lost its conservative majority this week, a change that some say signals a priority shift among voters. Two Democrat-backed candidates beat out conservatives in the school board election in Sarasota, FL, flipping the board’s majority.”
… “Helmed for the past year by Bridget Zeigler, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, the board is moving in a new direction, the winners said. A third Democrat-backed candidate will head to a runoff election against a contender endorsed by Republicans in November.”
… Megan Tennimon, a former teacher who won election to the board: “I really think at the end of the day, regardless of political affiliation, our community was just tired of the culture wars, the political theater and being the center of national attention for all the wrong reasons.”
… I lived in Sarasota for 28 years. My kids were born there and still live there. I was involved in many of these fights against Moms for Liberty in 2020-2022 before moving to Maine. Sarasota was once a nearly 50/50 county for many years until a huge influx of Republicans from other states during covid transformed it for the worse. I am very happy for the people there who have risen up to fight back.
… Former Republican Rep. David Jolly, who is now the Democratic nominee for governor in FL, was on CNN and then MS NOW:
“Byron Donalds says the race is not about Trump because he is running from the president that endorsed him. He didn’t break 50% in his own primary. Donalds is in trouble because Trump is in trouble.”
“I want to end the culture war not out of a progressive platform, but old school Republican ‘stay out of your life’ platform. Stay out of your bedroom, your doctor’s office, your personal life.”
“This is a 1974 post-Watergate moment. What is emerging in FL right now is that you don’t have to be a Democrat to vote for a Democrat. My job is to amplify Democratic values and bring in independents and Republicans. I didn’t join the Democratic Party to change it. I joined to the party to grow it. And that is exactly what’s happening on the ground.”
“Nationally, it completely restructures American politics when a Democrat gets elected in FL. The road to the WH changes dramatically in 2028. We can claw back congressional seats that were just gerrymandered. But more importantly, we let voters reimagine what our politics can look like.”
Yesterday on Uncovered, we led off the show with a deep dive on all angles of the Natalie Harp saga, plus Trump’s lies about the USS Lincoln, his carrier redesign plans, rambling comments about the ballroom, South Korea, Darlene Graham’s debate disaster and lots more! Link to the show is here.
If you missed the last Bulletin, you can find it here.
… Former Clinton aide Keith Boykin talked about Trump-endorsed Darline Graham’s disastrous performance in the SC senate debate: “To me, this is a reflection of the hypocrisy of the lie about meritocracy, the idea that they actually cared about merit. We saw this going back to Sarah Palin, to the president.
… They continue to promote unqualified, incompetent Republican candidates and they stuff them down our throats. Then they complain about black people and other women who happen to be progressive and say that we’re not qualified. It’s a lie. And
