This week’s decision by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to depart President Donald Trump’s immediate inner circle in order to “spend more time with her beautiful young children and family” still has tongues wagging in Washington.
Could Trump’s most effective communicator be leaving in a fit of pique, some wondered. After all, her announcement came just 24 hours after revelations that Trump had left scores of top administration staffers (not to mention the entire White House press corps) to their own fate aboard Air Force One, knowing the Iranians had threatened to attack it.
The elaborate subterfuge that saw the President board an escape plane on his way home from the Nato leaders’ summit in Turkey has left Trump open to accusations of abandonment, especially from fuming members of the press corps who assumed he was travelling with them.
The latest reporting suggests that Trump was accompanied by only three members of his inner circle on the backup jet: Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, an ideological Rottweiler who heavily influences the President’s thinking, Director of Oval Office Operations Walt Nauta, who previously served as Trump’s personal valet, and, oddly, Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old executive assistant.
