White House doesn’t want voters to see the real Trump

If there’s ever been anything Donald Trump loves more than gold, it’s a camera. The former reality TV host has willingly debased himself in a myriad of ways — doing an ad for Pizza Hut, shaving Vince McMahon’s head during a wrestling match, painful “acting” appearances in “Home Alone 2″ and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” — all to get a sweet, sweet dose of video proof of his existence.

Right now Trump can’t stop begging for attention, even though it’s immensely damaging to his party’s midterm prospects. He forced the Republicans to throw him a two-day fake convention so he could give lengthy prime-time speeches. He holds frequent on-camera events in the Oval Office, forgoing the work of actual governance so he can be photographed sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

“Sitting” may be the operative word here, because as much as Trump wants to be on camera, it’s increasingly obvious that the White House only wants that to be under controlled conditions, ideally with the president parked behind a desk. If he must stand up, he’s placed behind a generously sized podium, robust enough to handle the full body-weight of his lean. This urgent desire to control Trump’s image became especially apparent during his recent trip to Ireland, when the White House went after journalist Aaron Rupar, who is known for posting a steady stream of candid photos and videos of Trump on social media, often showing the president in a less than flattering light. 

“Look who made the trip to Ireland!” Rupar wrote on both X and Bluesky on Saturday, over a Getty image of Natalie Harp, a Trump aide who has drawn widespread attention for her unsettling sycophancy. Harp writes love notes to Trump with language like “you are all that matters to me” and “I want to bring you joy.” She has also been called the “human printer,” because one of her main tasks is to print out online material that praises Trump or makes him look good and then thrust it in his face. 

Rather than ignore this innocuous post from Rupar, the White House’s rapid response X account called him a “sick, deluded freak.” This inspired a torrent of abuse from Trump supporters, most of whom echoed the White House’s ugly claims that there’s something “creepy” about Rupar. 

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics?  Sign up for her free newsletter, Standing Room Only, now also on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Part of the defensiveness, no doubt, is about Rupar’s undoubted ability to make images of the enormous carry-on bag that Harp hauls around go viral. Last week, he posted a picture of Harp straining under an oversized pack, while observing that its size did nothing to quell “diaper bag allegations.”

“[D]amn, Natalie’s bag just keep getting bigger and bigger,” he wrote on Saturday, over another photo of Harp carrying a gigantic duffel bag while boarding Trump’s plane. He’s having fun, but it’s also true that the massive tote is a legitimate mystery. It seems unlikely that the coiffed and polished Harp would freely choose to forgo a real suitcase in order to carry an oversized sack like a disorganized college kid. Furthermore, she has frequently been photographed following Trump around with this enormous bag, even when the president is simply playing golf. 

The online anger directed at Rupar escalated further on Sunday, after he posted a video of another White House aide, whom he called a “blonde Trump flunkie,” trying to prevent journalists from filming or photographing Trump on the tarmac before his departure from Ireland. Multiple White House staff members defended this aide, a recent college graduate named Ellie Acra, by calling Rupar “gutter trash” and a “pathetic basement dweller,” and implying that there’s something unwholesome about his interest in the young, blonde female aides who surround Trump, often clad in sky-high heels. 

“The White House has a taxpayer-funded team that tries to incite harassment and threats against their political foes,” Rupar told Salon. “They seem to be especially triggered about my posts about Natalie Harp and how she accompanies the president everywhere.”

Rupar’s sly remarks about the cookie-cutter WASP aesthetic of Trump’s young female aides are nothing compared to the gross comments Trump himself has made about the women of his White House entourage. About 12 minutes into a speech at the Nassau County Police Academy last month, Trump started bragging about “these young, beautiful girls in the White House” and how the “gorgeous, beautiful girls” want nothing more than to lavish praise upon him. 

That incident served to remind us that even when Trump’s staff work to stage-manage how he’s being captured in public, the president reliably embarrasses himself with his bizarre fantasies and strange or repellent behavior. As Thomas Edsall wrote in the New York Times on Tuesday, Trump is “unstable” and “trapped in a fictional world.” Edsall notes that two Democratic senators from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed, recently submitted to the Congressional Record a statement from 36 prominent experts in mental health, raising concerns about Trump’s fitness for office. 

Those experts warned that Trump appeared to be experiencing a “rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline,” as evidenced by “[s]ignificant loss of self-control,” “compulsive, manic-like late-night communications,” “marked deterioration in cognitive functioning” and “[g]randiose and delusional beliefs, including assertions of infallibility,” among other symptoms of serious mental dysfunction. 

Two days after the president’s uninhibited boasts about how “young, beautiful girls” adore him, Rupar posted video of Trump at another event, shot from behind and looking awfully strange. “It looks like he has some sort of contraption back there,” Rupar wrote over the image, which showed an almost shelf-like protrusion over Trump’s rear end, causing the bottom of his jacket to sway and flop awkwardly rather than laying flat. 

Last week, Rupar posted another video of Trump at a public event, depicting a behind that looks very little like a human body of any shape or size, but suggests that there’s an object under Trump’s clothing. In the replies, Rupar’s followers posted photos of disability devices that are worn around the hips in order to assist people with walking. 

As Peter Baker of the New York Times wrote last week, however, Trump has discovered a technology that allows him to reshape his image as “a younger and thinner and more muscular version of himself”: artificial intelligence. The president posted to social media at least 60 times within a 10-hour span over the recent Labor Day weekend, many of those posts featuring AI-generated imagery of a healthier-looking Trump projected into childish power fantasies. He imagined himself as a steroid-enhanced bare-chested wrestler, able to beat actual musclemen at arm-wrestling. He presented an ultra-fit version of himself wielding a giant hammer against Iran, and a tough-guy hockey player besting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at his national sport. It would be upsetting to see an elderly relative wasting so much time on juvenile fantasy; when it’s the president, it’s downright alarming.

This anxiety about the public seeing more of Trump’s actual condition is almost certainly what’s fueling the White House campaign Rupar, rather than, as staffers claim, a chivalrous desire to protect their female colleagues. Rupar told Salon that he won’t be deterred “from the unvarnished coverage of Trumpworld I’ve been doing since 2016.” It’s “never fun to receive a flood of threatening and harassing messages online,” he explained, but he’s learned not to “take it personally.”

Rupar’s resolve is admirable, but he’s right that this isn’t about him at all. It’s about Trump and his immense, world-consuming ego. This is a man who would rather close down the Kennedy Center than accept that he doesn’t get to name it after himself. People like Rupar, who post candid videos and photos that reveal his human weakness, pierce through the increasingly fragile White House efforts to prop up the 80-year-old president as the epitome of strength and masculinity. The MAGA anger directed at Rupar suggests that he’s hit a nerve, and Trump’s followers would like to make it so hard for him to do his job that he quits.

“I have been doing this work for a long time and am cognizant of the risks involved,” Rupar said. All this rear-guard yelling will accomplish, most likely, is to convince Rupar that he’s onto something, and should keep on pulling back the fraying curtain around Donald Trump.