This thought experiment would not be possible without C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters,” from which this is unabashedly and unapologetically derived.
This is part of a series. See the Notes for the first iteration.
Greetings and Salutations, Screwtape:
My apologies for my recent lack of timely communication. As you know, the patient has fallen quite ill, which makes it more difficult to apply our usual invasive suggestive techniques.
Luckily, the patient has devolved so fully that he is fully capable of acting on our behalf with little intervention.
I’m happy to report that the lovely Mrs. Breckinridge has found a most delightful tart to aid our efforts.
Her name is Natalie, and I’m sure by now you’ve heard of her. Mrs. Breckinridge has applied herself to the cause impressively since receiving her latest punishments at the hands of the delightfully cruel Mr. Maddox, and, dare I say, I see a possibly bright future for her, despite her previous laxities.
I remember when I was a wee demon myself, a bit lax with my own first patient, but I rallied to the cause along with my patient, who proved to be, as you yourself have often reminded me, a good pol for the pot, as it were.
Natalie has quickly achieved legendary status in the human world. Stories abound of her exploits, even though she has been under Mrs. Breckinridge's tutelage for just a short time.
One of our favorite stories, which I must say forced me into a guffaw loud enough to have transcended our continuum and into the human realm for a brief moment, involves a little story involving one of the patient's many court cases.
Well, dear mentor, it seems young Natalie was left off a passenger list on the patient’s entourage to the courthouse. The Secret Service wouldn’t let her into the patient’s SUV because of the oversight. She huffed, she did, and she puffed, and she screamed, as well. A delightful scream it was, too, a shriek, really, which would have pierced eardrums had it been inside a room. A bit of bad luck there, I must say.
She was livid at being left off the entourage list because, as you may be aware, she is usually affixed to the patient’s side as if by epoxy.
Desperate to join the patient, she jumped into the trunk of the vehicle as it drove off. How the Secret Service was unable to prevent this, I can’t say.
Luckily, I think the only one who heard my laughter was Steven Cheung, the patient’s communication director, who has already joined our team and is destined, I’m told, for basement work tending to the baser needs of ghouls and trolls upon his exit from the foul planet that humans live on.
Natalie became a pet project of Mrs. Breckinridge shortly after the patient was smitten upon seeing her at something called the Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in 2019. When Mrs. Breckinridge heard him say, “She lit up the television screen like very few people I’ve ever seen do it,” she immediately went to work.
I remember that day well. The patient’s heart rate reached 150 beats per minute when he first set eyes on her, touched, I knew, by what he perceived as a strong resemblance to his daughter, which always sends his delightfully soiled mind into a besotted sexual frenzy.
Well, regardless, I thought he was a goner with that heart rate turning his orange skin purple and sweat soaking his exterior like the side of a cold glass of iced tea on a viciously hot summer day.
The enemy might have called that reaction sweet, a sign of a blooming love, but only if they were unaware of the patient’s unrequited longing for his primary blond offspring, which, let’s be honest here, is a bit much even for our team (Some of Mrs. Breckinridge’s younger helpers were said to be somewhat nauseated by the patient’s natural proclivities).
However, this is what makes working with this patient such a delight. He rarely requires more than a nudge, and lately, not even that.
I’m happy to report that the relationship has indeed blossomed, and we have Mrs. Breckinridge to thank for that, since the patient’s ability to express himself in ways that traditionally offer physiological pleasure to human females of Natalie’s age has, shall I say, expired. Not that there was much for him to work with in the first place, which itself is an irrelevant factor with his personality type, who take no interest in the carnal satisfaction of their paramours.
Mrs. Breckinridge instead went the obsession route, which is always a reliable weapon when it can be nurtured properly. For example, the large newspaper that we have been moderately successful at taming still employs a reporter by the name of Haberman, who I find a bit of a pest.
I’m told by Mr. Jones that he’s working on that problem, but for now, she continues to write such things as:
Several videos shared with The Times show Ms. Harp sprinting across great distances to keep up with Mr. Trump’s golf cart as it putters across his course in Scotland.
I have confirmed this with Mrs. Breckinridge, who says she and her helpers laughed endlessly as Natalie caught up to the golf cart, quite out of breath from all the running and chasing, and with bed hair suitable for a mug shot. As I understand it, this kind of foot chase across the golf links is a regular occurrence.
“I Want to Bring You Joy” is one of many expressions of devotion Natalie has expressed to the patient, but, as you know, she is consumed by our kind of devotion, not the enemy’s.
Mrs. Breckinridge has managed to obtain for Natalie a kind of proximity to the patient at all times that his other sycophants can only dream of. Mrs. Breckinridge, with her wry humor, has told me on multiple occasions that Natalie isn’t merely pasted on to the president; she is the paste itself, so close is she to him.
Natalie is with him at all hours. I have witnessed much of this, and it pleases me to no end. The patient eats up the attention the way starving jackals eat scraps of a lion’s quarry.
They sit together on his massive gold-framed bed, he on his phone, she on her laptop, posting wild AI memes together deep into the night, often with no sleep, giggling like school children during a clandestine sleepover. Occasionally, one of them will whisper a derogatory remark about his wife, Melania. More giggling follows, hand to mouth, as if to hide their illicit laughter from an unnamed observer. It’s all quite atrocious and enjoyable.
He especially enjoys when she mocks Melania’s accent. I believe those are the rare moments when there is a brief stirring within the front of his adult diapers, but that fades quickly.
The patient considers this late bedtime activity a way to consummate the relationship. It is the best he can hope for, after all, given his various medical conditions.
She participates in many social media posting frenzies with the patient, including 40 different times referring to E. Jean Carroll in one sitting. One post after another for hours. It was, please forgive my word usage, dear Screwtape, quite heavenly.
Mrs. Breckinridge herself helped Natalie pen one letter to the patient, which read, “You are all that matters to me.” I’ll admit to seeing the patient read this letter and not being particularly interested in its origin, because the patient displayed his usual aloofness when she called him on his cellphone ten or so times without his answering.
This all occurred before I had had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Breckinridge, so I was not yet attuned to her exquisite maneuverings.
I truly thought he was merely examining a piece of his deranged fan mail, one of his favorite pastimes. I had not yet been made aware of Natalie’s deep obsession over the patient.
When I did learn about it, I was in disbelief. How could such a troubled soul be allowed such proximity to a president by his security team? I was, frankly, a bit worried as well, knowing that these relationships, although quite enjoyable, usually end badly for one or both of the parties.
Credit here to Mr. Simmons, who assured me that the Secret Service had developed several plans for taking her out of the picture if need be. We can’t lose our patient as an asset before his natural time. We have no control over that, of course, it being the exclusive purview of the enemy, but if there are courses of action we can take to prevent an assassination, we must do so.
Mr. Simmons, as you know, was the demon who helped concoct the phone blown off ear story by urging a troubled Secret Service agent to plot it with a few others. Some of our finest work. I was pleased to learn that Mr. Simmons had moved on to charge d’affaires of Mitch McConnell photography sessions.
He’s done some fine work there, as well.
Permit me, then, my most merciless mentor, to provide a roundup to highlight their relationship. I offer this in bullet format, even though I know you despise them, because, frankly, I do enjoy tickling the underbelly of my tormentors. In addition to what I’ve described to this point:
First off, Natalie is Christian, but the kind we like.
Quoting the New York Times again, which I know you don’t mind now that we’ve had so much success getting them to sanitize the patient’s activities: “She rarely speaks on camera and yet she is never not there, ever-present with a wide smile and her eyes fixed on the president.”
She made news as one of those lucky few to be stuffed into a catering container in Turkiye during a recent threat by one of our favorite countries of all time, the Islamic Republic of Iran (I get goosebumps every time I mention the place).
She provided AI graphics and video to the patient that prompted him to post a video of a previous president and his wife, and one of our mortal enemies, Obama, as apes.
The press reports that she loves him as much as his wife and children, a report that I find humorous beyond words, since they don’t love him very much at all. Take away his ability to fill their coffers with ill-begotten money, and they’d all be lining up to hang him at the gallows. No, my eminence, hers is a unique obsession. What the patient’s wife and children feel toward him is less than a shadow of her dark obsession, I’m happy to report.
Her devotion to the patient has stirred a mixture of jealousy, disbelief, anxiety, frustration, fear, and other wondrous emotions within his team at the improved West Wing, bolstered, I believe, by her access to him, which is absolute. She is more than his Wormtongue. She is both his mouthpiece and the conduit through which all information to him flows. I’ll admit to being apprehensive about this at first, but it has proven to be remarkably helpful.
In one letter made public, she wrote to him: “I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).” If only we could snip her DNA and spread it through the populace (although some have given us credit for the way we’ve cultivated his blind and massive following).
The patient has stated that she is the only person who cares about him.
The news gadflies Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan call her a human binky, which I do appreciate, but not on their terms. We need to accelerate our conversion efforts on these two fools.
There’s much more, details of which I have sent through other channels.
If there’s any bad news to report, it is that the devious enemy has found its own surrogate, a fellow named Jon Ossoff, who is a Democratic senator from Georgia. By doing nothing more than mentioning her name in the same breath as the patient, he has become a legitimate presidential contender, and thus a threat to our cause, considering his tendencies, which veer directly into enemy territory.
He often makes wisecracks about the patient, and worse, all of them are spot on. Example: “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”
He is going to be a big problem for us. I recommend assigning one of our best to him, if he’s not a lost cause already.
Until next time, dear mentor…
— Yours with everlasting and demonic intent,
~ Mr. Fulbright
Notes
Most of the news content regarding this comes from two sources. Here are gift links:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/us/politics/natalie-harp-trump-devotion-white-house.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/us/politics/trump-natalie-harp.html
“Mrs. Breckinridge” is a bit of an Easter Egg, but you might need to be a boomer to figure it out.
For those of you not familiar with The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, they’re a series of letters written by a demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, on how to cajole and tempt Wormwood’s assigned target, an everyday British man.
For more on Natalie Harp, check out Jay Kuo’s Natalie Biography:
Mr. Fulbright is referring to this Wormtongue:
Mr. Fulbright’s target, of course, if somehow you didn’t figure that out, is Caligulus Trumpus.
Here is Mr. Fulbright’s original report to Screwtape:
Letters from Mr. Fulbright, April 6, 2025
This thought experiment would not be possible without C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, from which this is unabashedly and unapologetically derived.
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