So the president gave cash gifts to people who work for him, and Washington is acting like he handed out duffel bags of unmarked bills in a parking garage. Forty-five thousand dollars each to three aides, twenty grand to Walt Nauta, all disclosed on financial forms the administration released itself, and the usual suspects are hyperventilating about “supplementation of salary.”
That phrase comes from Richard Painter, who was the White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush. Yes, that George W. Bush. The same administration that lied us into Iraq and handed no-bid contracts to Halliburton. But sure, let’s hear from the ethics conscience of the Bush years. Painter posted on X that “a White House staffer is not your Fifth Avenue doorman.” Clever. Real clever. A man who spent years rubber-stamping one of the most corrupt foreign policy operations in American history is now lecturing us about Christmas bonuses.
Here’s what actually happened. Trump gave holiday gifts to Natalie Harp, Margo Martin, and Chamberlain Harris, each $45,000. Walt Nauta got $20,000. These are people who make $150,000 a year working grueling hours in the most high-pressure building in the country. Harp trails the president everywhere with a portable printer so she can feed him news on paper because the man doesn’t like screens. She types his Truth Social posts as he dictates them. Martin has been with him since the first term, followed him to Palm Beach when the whole establishment was trying to bury him, and came back. These are loyal people. In the private sector, a boss who notices that would give them a bonus and nobody would blink.
But in Washington, where every senator walks out of office a multimillionaire on a $174,000 salary, where Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio magically outperforms Warren Buffett, where Hunter Biden sells finger paintings for half a million dollars to anonymous buyers, suddenly a cash Christmas gift is a scandal. The Clintons spent eight years turning the Lincoln Bedroom into a Marriott rewards program and the press called it “access politics.” Trump gives his own money to his own staff and it’s a constitutional crisis.
The White House says the gifts are permissible because they’re not tied to official duties. And they’re right. The money came from Trump’s pocket, not the Treasury. He disclosed it. The forms are public. If this were a payoff, you wouldn’t put it on a form and publish it.
What I find more interesting is the sudden fixation on Natalie Harp specifically. CNN notes her “close relationship” with Trump has “come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks.” Senator Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat whose entire career is a product of establishment money, name-dropped her in a speech about Trump traveling on a Qatari plane. Since when does a United States senator single out a 35-year-old aide by name on the Senate floor? Since when is that normal? You don’t do that unless someone is feeding you a line and you’re happy to repeat it. The same people who spent years telling us that any criticism of government officials was a threat to democracy are now running oppo on a woman whose main job is carrying a printer.
Here’s the thing nobody in the press wants to acknowledge. If Barack Obama had given his aides $45,000 Christmas gifts, it would have been a heartwarming story about a generous president who never forgot where he came from. Front page, above the fold, “Obama’s Holiday Spirit.” You know it. I know it. The whole country knows it.
The real story isn’t the gifts. The real story is who decided this was the story, and why right now. Follow the timing. Follow the names being pushed. That’s where the actual agenda is, and as usual, the people screaming the loudest about ethics are the ones with the most to hide.