Haberman details Trump's visible decline — and his aides' fragile futures

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman implied the careers of much of President Donald Trump’s help are looking more and more tenuous as Trump’s age becomes more and more apparent.

Trump’s rapidly approaching end is becoming more and more clear as the president leans more and more heavily on helpers like “human binky’ Natalie Harp, a close personal aide and executive assistant.

“Yes. I use the term ‘binky’ on Sunday and it's really hard to see it as something otherwise,” Haberman told the MS NOW anchor. “I mean, he says, and again, we write about this in the book [Regime Change] that she's the only person in the staff in that world who loves him as much as his wife and kids. He would say to people during the interregnum period, you ‘know, you'll all go off and make money. She'll never leave me.’

The implication, of course, is that while Trump’s more accomplished helpers have a career waiting for them, Harp fewer opportunities awaiting her after Trump beyond a nice smile and whatever connections come of her time in the Trump White House.

Haberman pointed out that Harp’s big accomplishment was working for the right-wing network OAN and speaking at one of the conventions, speaking of her own health challenge and crediting Trump with helping save her.

“We wrote in the in the book about how she had alarmed people in his world, including the secret service, by leaving these deeply personal letters in [Trump’s] personal spaces. ‘Do you know that you are all that matters to me,’ was one. Another talked about ‘wishing for a day where they wouldn't talk about work,’” said Haberman. “You know, she's clearly taken devotion to him to a very different level. And he is somebody for whom people being loyal to him means a lot.”

And that sounds like the extent of Harp’s talent for a president who is already clearly in decline, said Haberman.

“He looks like 80 and he sounds like 80, and he is speaking slower than he used to,” said Haberman. “And he has physical things that are popping up, whether it's rashes on the skin or whether it's the swelling of the ankles and whether it is trips to Walter Reed that were taking place with increasing frequency, or whether it's the closing of the eyes in the middle of the meetings at about 4:00 every day. His White House is not transparent on many things, but his health has always been a specific black box.”

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