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‘BLUNT FORCE’ DRAMA

How Volatile Trump’s Aides Are Forced to Speak in Code: Author

Trump’s biographer has revealed the secret phrase aides use to quietly warn one another about the president’s temper.

President Donald Trump is so prone to outbursts that his aides have been forced to develop a coded language to warn one another about his volatile mood, according to his biographer.

A moment captured Tuesday between the 80-year-old president and his ever-present aide Natalie Harp appeared to offer a glimpse of the temper his aides are reportedly forced to navigate.

Donald Trump

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

Reuters photographer Jonathan Ernst caught a scowling Trump just outside the Oval Office, his index finger raised beside his 35-year-old aide. Harp, clad in an all-white ensemble, smiled as she stood next to the sour-looking president, who appeared to be pointing toward Bill Pulte, the MAGA loyalist installed as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“He looked like he was completely downloading on her. She looked like she was conscious that there were cameras, and so she was sort of laughing and looking like she was frankly taking abuse,” host Joanna Coles said on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast.

US President Donald Trump and his executive assistant Natalie Harp return from an America.gov AI event to the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, September 29, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Trump appeared visibly unhappy and seemed to be yelling something as he returned to the White House from the launch of America.gov, the Trump administration’s new AI-powered website.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

“Everybody takes abuse,” Trump biographer Michael Wolff replied, explaining that the president’s aides learn that anyone will eventually find themselves in his line of fire.

Wolff, who has written four tell-alls about Trump and spent time in the White House during his first term, revealed that aides devised a secret phrase to tip one another off about what awaited them before seeing the president.

US President Donald Trump (R) speaks with aide Natalie Harp (2L) as they return to the White House following an event to unveil the new America.gov website, in Washington, DC, on September 29, 2026. (Photo by Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images)

Bill Pulte also appeared to be on the receiving end of the president’s anger.

KENT NISHIMURA/Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images

“People around Trump would say, ‘How’s the weather?,’” the author recounted, a discreet shorthand to find out, “What’s his mood?”

“This is a man who is wholly unfiltered. There are no restraints here... If he feels it, if he thinks it, he expresses it, and his powers of expression are... blunt force,” Wolff continued. “That’s it. You’re going to get it. It’s going to come at you.”

Wolff recalled seeing Trump give his longtime adviser Jason Miller a “horrendous” chewing-out, adding that Harp was bound to have endured the same treatment.

“The wrath has come on her, and it comes on her often,” Wolff said. “This was true about Hope Hicks, Margot Martin, all of these women around him.

Letter reportedly from Natalie Harp to Donald Trump

“You are all that matters to me. I don’t want to ever let you down,” Harp told the president in her letter.

Obtained by The Daily Beast/Howl

“And let’s remember, these women around him... they are there... in the most abject capacity... There’s no pretense that they are there for any other reason but the succor of Donald Trump,” Wolff continued. “They are there to be his comfort blanket.”

Harp seemed to be walking on eggshells in two letters she wrote to Trump, published in full by the Daily Beast in August, apologizing for apparent missteps she imagined might have angered him.

“If there is anything else I have done to cause you trouble, please forgive me,” she begged in one letter.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, has previously told the Daily Beast: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud.”

Find and subscribe to Inside Trump’s Head with Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes of incomparable insight into the psyche of the world’s most talked-about man drop every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evening on YouTube and Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday mornings on other podcast platforms.

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