[Transcript edited for clarity, flow and legnth]
Mary Trump: I got to chat with journalist April Ryan, and we covered a lot, including the potential national security threats posed by Donald’s new thirty five year old assistant, Natalie Harp, and the ways in which Donald is laying waste to Washington, D.C., and what we need to do about it. I hope you enjoy it.
Hello, everybody. I am here with the amazing, inimitable April Ryan. Journalist, badass, awesome human. April, it’s great to see you.
April Ryan: It’s great to see you back from vacation. It was, as Norm Eisen calls it, a “fakation.” I worked, but I worked in one of the most beautiful places that I love, Martha’s Vineyard. It was amazing. The internet was horrible, but it was still incredible.
I’ve been watching everything that has been going on in Washington from afar. Donald Trump has a great new best friend who wants to stay by his side, and now Melania is suddenly out of hiding. What is that? The First Lady is back. I mean, what is that?
Mary Trump: You know things are bad when they’re willing to pay Melania enough money to make a public appearance.
April Ryan: When she made that appearance, she might have been wearing designer clothes, but she certainly didn’t look happy. It looked like she was doing it begrudgingly.
Donald Trump surrounds himself with sycophants. Anytime someone is in power, people gravitate toward that power. The White House has become a magnet for the crazies. He inspires a level of loyalty that is completely detached from reality.
Looking at the letters from his assistant makes you stop and think. As Arsenio Hall used to say, it makes you go, “Hmm.”
Melania is back because of the optics. Donald Trump wants people to believe everything is fine, that they’re in sync. But we know they don’t even sleep in the same bedroom when she’s at the White House. They sleep in separate rooms, and she’s rarely there anyway.
You know why your aunt isn’t at the White House? Because Donald Trump didn’t want her there. He used the ballroom as an excuse, but he demolished her office in the East Wing. This isn’t really about building a ballroom. It’s about pushing the First Lady aside.
Some people say they don’t care, but we should care because this is the Office of the President of the United States, and it has been turned into a mockery. If somebody doesn’t care, that’s fine, but I’m going to keep talking about it because I’ve covered the presidency for twenty nine years, and I have never seen anything like this.
April Ryan: This is the kind of nonsense the American taxpayer is paying for. When you travel around the world and speak with people in other countries, the United States has fallen to the bottom rung in their minds because of the insanity happening here. Someone called it the Office of Delinquency, and honestly, that’s exactly what it looks like.
It is corruption. They are taking your taxpayer dollars while failing the people who actually serve this country. We have service members stationed in the Middle East whose deployments have been extended. We’ve heard reports of at least one sailor going overboard because conditions have become so unbearable. The food is rancid. The water is filthy. The sanitation is inadequate. These are the people we ask to defend this democracy.
If something happens tomorrow, we expect them to stand up and protect us, but we can’t even provide them with decent living conditions.
Yet somehow there is always enough money to cover horses in gold, create vanity projects, and install things that exist solely to glorify Donald Trump. You can spend money making monuments to yourself, but you can’t take care of the people serving this democracy.
That is a national security issue, and almost nobody is talking about it.
Mary Trump: Exactly. I want to go back to something you just said because it is so important. The priorities of this regime, especially Donald’s priorities, are completely out of sync with what the American people need and what our military needs.
He brought us into a war. While our service members are suffering and Americans are struggling to afford groceries and gasoline, he is spending hundreds of millions of dollars, nearly a billion, renovating the White House. Nobody asked for that. Nobody wanted it.
We should absolutely care about that.
And we should also care about what’s happening with Natalie Harp. I’ll say her name because she’s allegedly a civil servant whose salary we pay. Natalie Harp represents a national security risk, and the hypocrisy surrounding her is astounding.
Remember when Bill Clinton first ran for president? Hillary Rodham Clinton received endless criticism simply because she had kept her maiden name. Lindsey Graham’s sister is now using her maiden name because she believes it will improve her chances in a Republican primary, and suddenly that’s perfectly acceptable.
Then there was Monica Lewinsky. A twenty two year old woman was vilified because a powerful man abused the imbalance that existed between them. Yet now we are apparently not even allowed to ask questions about a thirty five year old woman whose responsibilities remain unclear, who is being paid with taxpayer dollars, and who would never qualify for a security clearance.
She is the national security risk.
April Ryan: Exactly. If Donald Trump was careless enough to store top secret documents in a bathroom, then you know this young woman is seeing things she should never see and has no clearance to access. That isn’t speculation. That is based on what we already know about how recklessly he handled classified information.
When you mentioned Monica Lewinsky, it reminded me of everything that happened during those years because I covered it. But now I also think about Katie Phang and the lawsuit involving the FBI investigation into the woman who alleged she had been assaulted when she was only thirteen years old.
Those are the stories people need to know about.
Back then, every salacious detail dominated the headlines. Now we are living through 2026, and America is in crisis, yet so much of what really matters is barely being discussed.
People ask what they should do. The answer is simple. Vote.
Do you see what’s happening in these midterms? Voters are frustrated, and they are demanding change. The Democratic Party is finally being forced to confront realities it avoided for years. Progressives are increasingly being welcomed under the Democratic tent, and that is because people want to feel represented.
This country spent decades trying to stay in the middle, but now everyone wants to know that there is room for them inside the party. I genuinely believe things are changing, and my bellwethers are Georgia and Texas.
I’ve spoken with people all over Martha’s Vineyard about Georgia. Keisha Lance Bottoms is within the margin of error, but Georgia remains a deeply racist state. That’s simply the reality.
April Ryan: Donald Trump has said it himself. He calls himself a developer. Well, if he wants to be a developer, then he should go back to being a private citizen and develop things. He should not be redeveloping the People’s House. Nobody asked for any of this.
Washington looks like one giant construction zone. Everywhere you turn there are scaffolds, barriers, and projects. I don’t remember seeing this city look like this except around inaugurations, when temporary structures go up and then come back down. This is different. It’s constant.
They’re pulling money from every corner of government to fund these vanity projects. The National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, and other agencies are losing resources so Donald Trump can indulge himself.
Think about who we’re talking about. This is the same man who bankrupted casinos. Hillary Clinton was right to point that out years ago. How do you bankrupt a casino? And now we’re watching someone with that record oversee the finances of the United States.
People are losing jobs. Markets are shifting. Companies are sending warning signs. We need to pay attention to what is happening because the warning lights are flashing everywhere.
Mary Trump: The national debt is now forty trillion dollars.
April Ryan: Inflation is up. Gas prices are climbing again. Eggs cost too much. Rent is too high. We are living through a real crisis, yet Donald Trump is showing off the renovations he paid for with taxpayer money.
When it comes to helping the American people, he says he doesn’t care. That’s exactly what he said.
Mary Trump: That’s exactly right. People need to start listening to what he says and believing him. He doesn’t care.
And the continued sane washing of Donald has to stop. Instead of simply reporting what he says, too many journalists keep trying to explain it away or fill in the blanks for him. They try to make sense of statements that don’t make sense.
No. Let people hear exactly what he is saying. Let them decide. We don’t need reporters rewriting his words to make them sound coherent.
April Ryan: I do have some good news. I have a new book coming out. It’s called Notes on a Blacklash: When a Black Woman Goes Viral.
The book talks about what it’s like to continue covering the White House and how strategic I’ve had to become because every time I walk into that building, I’m attacked. I write about this administration, the previous administration, and what it means for women to speak with authenticity, become a viral moment, and then live with the consequences.
People see the viral clips, but they don’t see the death threats, the bomb threats, and everything that comes afterward.
I also write about what happens when Black journalists are targeted. Rachel Scott endured repeated verbal attacks from Donald Trump, including being called degrading names, and there was very little institutional support for her. Compare that with the response when Caitlin Collins is attacked, and you begin to see the different standards that still exist.
After Kamala Harris lost on November 5, many Black women said they were going to sit back and drink their tea because they had done everything they could. There was that powerful image of Black women sitting calmly while the city burned in the background.
But we can’t simply step back because the city really is burning. Donald Trump tried to blame a Black woman mayor, Karen Bass, for the Los Angeles fires, even though those fires extended far beyond the city’s jurisdiction.
The book is about our fight, our authenticity, and the cost of using our voices. We’re in the middle of a major preorder campaign, so I hope people will support it wherever books are sold. And Mary, thank you for allowing me to talk about Notes on a Blacklash on your platform.
Mary Trump: And if I’m not mistaken, it comes out on October 6. Preorders matter tremendously. They’re what help get a book onto the New York Times bestseller list and keep it there, so spread the word far and wide.
Go preorder it now, and then on October 6 you’ll get a wonderful surprise when it arrives. I’m already fortunate enough to have a PDF copy, and once I’ve finished reading it, we’re absolutely going to sit down together and talk about it.
April, it is always wonderful to see you. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. Congratulations on the new book, and thank you to everybody for joining us. Go preorder Notes on a Blacklash and check out everything April Ryan does because it is always worth your time.
April Ryan: Thank you. Mary, when you finish reading the book, I already know you’re going to be texting me because your jaw is going to drop.
I’m reaching a point in my life where I don’t want to hold anything back anymore. I’m turning fifty nine, and I felt it was finally time to tell these stories. I can’t wait to hear what you think because I know you’re going to have a reaction.
Mary Trump: I am very, very excited, my friend. Congratulations.
