Mediaite ONE SHEET: The Natalie Harp Story Explodes, A Jaw-Dropping Fake Poll and More!

You are reading a special free preview of Mediaite’s daily newsletter — the Mediaite One Sheet: a fast, five-minute briefing that curates the best of the media newsletters. Subscribe today at a special new (lower) price to get the One Sheet delivered direct to your inbox five days a week!

TOP STORY

WHO’S AFRAID OF NATALIE HARP?

Well, the answer might be… everybody? Nobody? Somewhere in between?

Natalie Harp is a former One American News Network (OANN) presenter who began working as an aide to President Donald Trump in 2025. She’s known as the “human printer” because she follows the president around and prints news he wants to read; she’s also allegedly the person responsible for posting a video to Trump’s Truth Social account that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.

But most Americans weren’t aware of her until Sunday, when Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) told a crowd of supporters the president would rather “travel with Natalie” than do his job. The comment sparked a swift and bizarrely defensive response from MAGA and the GOP, leading many to wonder what exactly is going on between Harp and Trump that needs to be defended so strongly, and so… selectively.

THREE TAKES

CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — Ossoff “knows exactly what he’s doing,” Stelter argued Wednesday morning, and he’s not the only person who’s noted the Georgia senator is exceptional at going viral. “Liberal commentators cheered Ossoff while conservative commentators condemned him,” Stelter noted, and Fox News even covered Ossoff “for the first time in six years.” So was his comment a calculated risk, a legitimate political concern, or a little bit of both? It seems like the third option is the ticket; with this move, Ossoff “showed a sophisticated understanding of the social media environment” and “titillated, provoked and enraged different audiences simultaneously.”

The Poynter Report, Amaris Castillo — There’s been at least one other casualty in the Ossoff/Harp/Trump saga: CNN reporter Kristen Holmes, who used a White House press event ostensibly meant to celebrate a young lifeguard to ask Trump what he thought about Ossoff’s comments. A visibly riled up Trump instead attacked Holmes and told her to “be quiet.” That response set off a wave of right-wing attacks against Holmes (and even her children) on social media. The White House’s rapid response team, which “was launched last year with a stated objective to “support President Donald J. Trump’s America First agenda and hold the Fake News accountable for their lies,” soon joined in. Holmes has the backing of CNN, but it’s remarkable how quickly Ossoff’s comments jumped from Georgia to D.C. to the internet at large.

Townhall, Matt Vespa — CNN made the decision to bring Natalie Harp’s “estranged” brother, Preston Harp, on last night and Vespa is very mad about it indeed. Vespa is enraged that Natalie has “somehow become a story” and insists: “Newsflash: the president’s body person or persons are around him a lot.” Dems, including Ossoff, are “hoping a sex scandal rests beneath the mountain of innuendos that’s been lobbed at Harp and Trump.” Ossoff also “needs to know his place.” Vespa added, “My dude, you’re a little senator. Trump is president. It’s not a contest between the president and soy boy Jonny.” Interviewing Preston was “gross and weird.” Preston, on the other hand, seemed pretty pleased and hinted Natalie “might be obsessed with Trump, adding to insinuations of an improper relationship while also taking swipes at the president.” Guess that estrangement is starting to make sense.

TAKEAWAY: Trash gossip meets D.C.? Color us curious. To be honest, we haven’t had a political story like this in quite some time. Ossoff’s ability to weave in and out of virality and to walk right up to the very end of line without crossing it is pretty impressive, especially since a comment that simultaneously could mean nothing and could mean everything has set off a firestorm that will probably continue to roll around the political stratosphere for weeks. Our authors might not all think what Ossoff had to say was appropriate, but it seems everyone — even Town Hall — is at least a little impressed he did it in the first place.

📰 TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS 📰

SCOOP 🍨 CJR’s The Media Today, Jem Bartholomew — Newspapers often “fall short on covering the realities of working-class life,” Bartholomew wrote today. That topic is the subject of a report by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP), led by Elena Krumova. Bartholomew spoke to Krumova about the reporting, and she noted conversations about class were largely eschewed in the 1950s and 1960s because “there was a view that talking about class was somehow un-American or aligned to Marxist views,” but that changed at “the end of the seventies and the beginning of the Reagan era.” So the first goal was to “reconcile these two findings.” That process included the use of digitized articles that a squad of research assistants pored through. And while national publications like the New York Times tend to focus on social class frequently, regional papers do not. “For those papers there is really not an increase in attention to the working class, except during election years,” Krumova said. “But that is not sustained. With the Times, that attention is sustained.”

SCOOP 🍨 The Poynter Report, Ren LaForme — It turns out Median Polling, which was behind poll results that showed Karen Bass was leading Nithya Raman “by a wide and growing margin” and that Francesca Hong was up over David Crowley by “more than 20 percentage points” totally made up those results. “ These polls were fake. So was the polling company,” LaForme wrote today. Median Polling (whoever you are!) told the Los Angeles Times the polls were “a short term social experiment to examine how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification.”

LaForme and the team at Poynter spoke to Kelly McBride, Poynter’s senior vice president for ethics and NPR’s public editor about how this all happened in the first place. McBride pointed out the obvious, that journalists have a responsibility to “ensure that, when they are reporting the results of a poll, they have verified that the polling firm is legitimate” — something that we’ve “struggled with this … for a decade now.” McBride also said, “If you reported these fake poll results, the public deserves to know why you think they should trust you in the future.”

SCOOP 🍨 POLITICO Playbook, Will Steakin, Adam Wren, and Dasha Burns — Florida’s primaries Tuesday night saw a little razzle dazzle in the form of establishment Dem Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who bested DSA candidate Oliver Larkin by a whopping 30 points in the state’s 25th district. “Florida is known for hurricanes, and so the DSA is a disaster area in Florida — and there’s no federal reimbursement coming to help these people” Moskowitz told Playbook. Moskowitz, “who may be the moderate best positioned to take on the left,” won in part because he “ignored Larkin’s attacks and the DSA chatter around the race in the run-up to Tuesday,” and bet “that engaging his little-known challenger would only give him oxygen.” Now that he’s got an edge, Moskowitz also took on progressive commentator Hasan Piker. “Democrats shouldn’t play hide the Piker now,” he also told Playbook. “For all those people who thought it was a great idea to campaign with him, as Jay-Z once said, ‘Bring ’em out, bring ’em out.’ They shouldn’t be hiding him now.”

ANALYSIS 👀 Punchbowl News AM, Ally Mutnick and Em Luetkemeyer— There was even more going on in Florida last night, Mutnick and Luetkemeyer wrote Wednesday morning. State lawmaker Angie Nixon pulled off a massive upset against former National Security Council official and Army veteran Alex Vindman last night, and she did so while raising a fraction of the amount of money he pulled in. “It’s hard to overstate how shocking Nixon’s victory was. Vindman garnered national attention — and an army of small-dollar donors — after testifying in the Trump impeachment proceedings,” Mutnick and Luetkemeyer wrote. “He spent $9 million total by the end of July. Nixon spent less than $900,000.”

ANALYSIS 👀 POLITICO, Erin Doherty and Alec Hernandez— Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) is running a “meticulously viral campaign” ahead of the 2026 midterms, Doherty and Hernandez reported Tuesday. The senator is “hands-on in all aspects of his campaign, including messaging,” and Democrats who have worked with him all say he is “meticulous about how he communicates and the details of his campaign’s work.” For example, Doherty and Hernandez wrote, Ossoff’s decision to call out Trump’s aide Natalie Harp on Sunday was “part of a larger prepared speech that hammered Trump over the war in Iran — and part of a larger strategy to raise his profile in a critical Senate race.”

ANALYSIS 👀 The Free Press, Kat Rosenfield— “It’s been a long time” since a criminal murder case captivated the minds of many like Lindsay Clancy’s is right now, Rosenfield wrote Wednesday. The defense team for Clancy, who admitted to killing her young children in January 2023, is arguing she committed the heinous crimes because she was experiencing postpartum psychosis. Clancy has received an “outpouring” of support online from people who have raised at least $800,000 for her parents, but there’s also been an “outpouring of disgust” from others. Both groups are attempting to “to box up and file away an act so incomprehensibly evil that it’s virtually intolerable to look at directly, unshrouded by either the veil of compassion or the excitement of a mystery to be solved,” Rosenfield wrote.

“One gets the sense that people are desperate to make sense of what happened but only so long as the answers are tidy and satisfying. For the true-crimers, that means turning a grotesque tragedy into an exciting mystery, along with the self-flattering satisfaction of having figured it all out and sticking it to the patriarchy while doing it,” Rosenfield added. “For the system-blamers, it means a story that is equal parts soothing and scary. If being possessed by the inescapable impulse to kill your kids is as unlucky and uncontrollable as being struck by lightning, then it also cannot be your fault, and that’s a relief.

ANALYSIS 👀The Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger— It’s time for a midterm “vibe check,” and Kristol and Egger fired one off Wednesday. Though Florida, Alaska, and Wyoming all held primaries yesterday, “many of the most interesting results” came out of the first one. Primaries were marked by “Democratic establishmentarians and iconoclasts” who “traded blows,” and “the biggest prize went to DSA candidate Angie Nixon, who knocked off a far better funded moderate contender in Alex Vindman to capture Florida Democrats’ Senate nomination.” If you’re a “Democrat looking for a jolt of hopium” the Pennsylvania state House race in the 12th District is it: Democrat Brandon Dukes appears to have “pulled out a stunning upset over Republican Scott Timko” in the race, and edged out Timko by 88 votes.

ANALYSIS 👀 Awful Announcing’s The A Block— The death of ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen was commented on by Bob Ley, “naturally one of the most iconic, trusted, and poignant voices to ever grace ESPN.” Ley “summed up his legacy in the best and most impactful way.” Awful Announcing also wrote, “Before Rasmussen, the thought of an all-sports round-the-clock cable network was a crazy notion.  And in ESPN’s early days, there were likely many skeptics. It’s hard to think of it now, but ESPN was once the underdog.” Thanks in part to Rasmussen, who “brought the love of sports into the living rooms of the masses,” ESPN has since turned a love of sports into “a national obsession.”

📈BUSINESS OF MEDIA 🎥

Digiday Daily, Krystal Scanlon — OpenAI is set to expand its advertising business to Europe on Monday, August 24, launching ChatGPT ads across 31 European markets, including Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. This expansion marks the six-month milestone for OpenAI’s ad venture. To accompany the launch, the artificial intelligence company will roll out a new, consent-focused European privacy policy later this month, navigating strict regional data regulations by building its marketing offerings around user permission.

The Ankler Art & Crafts, The Ankler Staff — Kareem Rahma‘s hit talk show, SubwayTakes, has secured a historic Primetime Emmy nomination in the outstanding short form variety category. This marks one of the first times the Television Academy has recognized an independent, non-studio-backed YouTube show. Shot entirely on NYC subways with movie-quality cameras and professional wired mic packs, the show interviews both A-list celebrities and everyday commuters. Rahma intentionally keeps all production blemishes intact, presenting SubwayTakes as a gritty, authentic alternative to glossy studio productions and AI-generated content. QUOTE 📣 “The show is perfect because of its imperfections.”

Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — YouTube video essays are experiencing a big lengthening trend, in case you haven’t noticed. Now, creators who once published digestible, 10-minute videos are transitioning to something closer to two-hour-long uploads. Former Vox producer Carlos Maza says these long(-long)-form narrative videos are highly effective at fostering deep parasocial relationships with audiences. This intense engagement pays off financially by driving positivity and chatter in the comments and converting casual viewers into paying subscribers on creators’ Patreon pages. QUOTE 📣 Per Maza, “People tell you they like you and want more of you. That shit will break your brain.”

Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — Newsletter-on-newsletter reporting! Digital news outlet Semafor (a frequent One Sheet flyer) has successfully navigated the media landscape by adopting an “anti-scale” business model. Rather than chasing viral social media traffic with hundreds of writers, co-founder Ben Smith simply recruited a small group of veteran reporters to cover highly specialized niches. Smith credits his experience leading BuzzFeed News—which shuttered shortly after Semafor’s launch—with showing him how pursuing traffic for the sake of traffic can cause trouble.  QUOTE 📣 Smith “saw firsthand how chasing traffic for traffic’s sake can warp incentives and ultimately put a company on a path toward collapse.”

Breaker, Lachlan Cartwright — A new player is entering the sports media landscape with the launch of Underscore Media next month. Helmed by marketing executive Steve Hirsch and sports media vets Sal Licata, Jimmy Traina, and John Jastremski, the venture aims to build a modern, “feed-first” platform tailored for New York sports fans. To differentiate itself from legacy networks, Underscore will abandon traditional around-the-clock broadcasting, operating instead as an event-driven service that is only “live when it matters.” QUOTE 📣 Per Hirsch, “Sports is the last frontier remaining in traditional, legacy media, and I wanted to bring something to market that demonstrates what a modern, sophisticated media operation can be.”

Breaker, Lachlan Cartwright — Declan Kelly‘s financial communications firm, Consello, is strategically poaching top talent from its direct competitors to expand its mergers and acquisitions business. Consello has successfully hired Benjamin Spicehandler, former co-head of U.S. shareholder activism defense, and Danya Al-Qattan, co-head of North American transactions, away from PR giant FGS Global. The move marks a significant shakeup in the high-stakes financial PR arena, where firms like Kekst, Joelle Frank, and Brunswick Group are locked in a war to be #1.

OTHER COOL STUFF

Breaker — Comic legend John Cleese set a speed record for televised awkwardness during a guest appearance on the BBC’s The One Show. In less than 30 seconds on air, the Fawlty Towers star demanded hosts Lauren Laverne and Roman Kemp tell him their names and then pivoted to mentioning controversial film director Roman Polanski.

Morning Brew — Happy National Potato Day to all who celebrate! History reveals that President Thomas Jefferson is credited with helping popularize French fries in the United States by serving them at the White House. Stop by McDonald’s today to honor him.

👀 WHAT GOT MISSED? 👀

CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — A federal judge in Minnesota is reviewing the case against Don Lemon. Judge Laura Provinzino ordered “closed-door judicial review of grand jury materials related to” Lemon’s indictment. Lemon, along with Georgia Fort and others are “accused of disrupting a church service in January.” Provinzino is also “seeking to balance secrecy surrounding grand jury proceedings with the possibility she could find grounds to dismiss the indictment because of a matter that occurred before the grand jury.”

🏆 NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY 🏆

Status, Oliver Darcy — Curious about the latest development in the Disney/Trump war? Want to know more about Ross Barkan’s fall from grace? Been paying attention to the fact that 29 states have accused Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg of getting a bunch of children hooked on Facebook and Instagram on purpose? Wondering how movie theaters are responding to Paramount’s attempted merger with Warner Bros. Discovery? Getting ready to buy your Dune 3 tickets but the AMC site has crashed? Well guess what: Darcy and the team at Status covered all of this and more in today’s newsletter, which is why it’s getting our trophy today.

 Darcy’s look into the “extraordinary” ABC/FCC lawsuit is especially notable. As he put it, “And so, facing the very real possibility that he might take action against ABC’s local broadcast licenses, Disney executives ultimately made the call to use the final remaining arrow in the company’s quiver: take the FCC to court.”

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.