The hosts of Pod Save America are floating theories about Trump’s lengthy Bill Maher diatribe, including that the president may have used voice-to-text to write the 1,321-word post, or even that his 35-year-old special assistant, Natalie Harp, may have had to “write down all of that as he read it out loud.”
Those are just a few thoughts the former Obama staffers shared on the latest episode of the podcast, hosted by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor.
“That was wild,” Favreau began before responding to Vietor’s theory that Harp was to blame for the screed. “I don’t know how Natalie could have faithfully just written this down or typed this out... I mean, there’s no proofreading. You would have cleaned it up a little bit.”
Vietor added of Harp, who makes a taxpayer-funded salary of $150,000 a year for her intimate role, “I don’t think she cleans it up, man. I think that’s what she thinks the gig is.”
Though he was skeptical that Harp was involved, Favreau said he’d already ruled out at least one thing: “Certainly, no one’s going to accuse AI of writing his stuff.”
Maher caught Trump’s ire once again after his second dinner with the president at the White House, when Trump was incensed that the HBO host kept criticizing him publicly.
The host blasted critics of his chumminess with the president, telling viewers he “loves” his dinners with Trump—but the feeling was not mutual. Trump posted his longest Truth Social post to date to slam Maher as a “complete loser,” as well as a “coward,” “liar,” “pothead,” and “sleazebag.”
Though Maher inspired the stream-of-consciousness post, the insults took up merely a sliver of the over 1,300-word count, as the president took the opportunity to address his plans for the White House Press Room, his administration’s crackdown on so-called widespread voting by “illegal voters,” and declare the country would be “dead” if he hadn’t won re-election, among other things.
Maher is “just the delivery vehicle” for Trump’s rambling message, Favreau said. “He’s tangentially part of it, but most of it is just a long ramble. There’s a thing about The Apprentice and why it was a great show and how we would have won anyway even without The Apprentice.”
Lovett floated another theory, saying, “It sounds like dictation. It sounds like saying something out loud that someone else is typing, ‘cause he’s not typing all this.”
Favreau concluded, “It sounds like he’s lost his f---ing mind, is what it sounds like.”
