Lifestyle
She’s Young, Trump-Friendly, and Has a White House Press Pass
The waitress was pouring tap water. But Natalie Winters was quick to ask for bottled.
“No fluoride for our dear dinner guest!” she said, gesturing to me. “Only filtered water and pesticide-free limes.”
We were sitting in the back corner of Butterworth’s, a Capitol Hill bistro that has become a destination for friends and supporters of President Trump. Stephen K. Bannon, Ms. Winters’s current boss, has hosted private events there. Her former boss, Raheem Kassam, the editor in chief of The National Pulse, is an investor. The menu that night featured lamb tartare, oysters brûlée and pork cheeks.
Ms. Winters and I had met for dinner, or so I had thought. “Honestly,” she said, “I’m probably not going to eat because that’s my brand. I don’t eat at restaurants because I don’t like the seed oils that they use.”
At 24, Ms. Winters has been a White House correspondent since Jan. 28. She reports for Mr. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, whose audience includes large swaths of the Republican base, high-level officials and the president himself.
She belongs to a group of journalists from conservative outlets who have taken on a new national prominence in recent months as they jostle for positions in the cramped James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has described long-established news media organizations as increasingly irrelevant while accusing them of spreading “lies.”
The White House Correspondents’ Association, which includes journalists from dozens of outlets, has criticized the new administration’s handling of the press, saying it discourages independent reporting and gives priority to those who favor President Trump’s agenda. But the elevation of nontraditional outlets has been a good thing for Ms. Winters and some other journalists in the West Wing, including those representing Breitbart News and Lindell TV, the platform founded by the conspiratorial MyPillow salesman Mike Lindell.
When Ms. Winters is not seated beside Mr. Bannon in the basement studio of his townhouse near the Capitol, she is often reporting to the loyal “War Room” audience from outside the White House, delivering off-the-cuff monologues that pillory Democrats and, sometimes, her fellow reporters.
“It’s very gonzo, which I like,” she said. “I think of it as an I.Q. test every day.”
Ms. Winters describes herself as a “populist nationalist,” like Mr. Bannon. She says she “detests” more Republicans than she admires. She frequently attacks party leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson and usually supports Mr. Trump.
“Even though I agree with most of what Trump does,” Ms. Winters said, “it’s because I ideologically agree with him. Not because I am a cultist.”
She counts Mr. Bannon not only as her co-host and boss, but also as her mentor. When he went to federal prison last year for defying a subpoena from a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, he entrusted her to host “War Room” in his absence.
Since Mr. Trump’s reascension, her profile has skyrocketed to the point where she says she is recognized in restaurants and airports. She says her parents have been surprised by her often combative onscreen persona.
“It’s such a different version of myself than I am in my day-to-day life,” she said, adding, “I don’t even recognize myself.”
Ms. Winters grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., the daughter of a physician father and a stay-at-home mother. She attended Harvard-Westlake, an elite prep school in Los Angeles, and was relatively apolitical until the 2016 campaign was underway.
Various school activities struck her as liberal-coded and performative. First it was a bake sale intended to raise awareness of the gender pay gap. “Just straight-up bogus,” Ms. Winters said. Then came the student walkout in protest of gun violence after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. “A school-sanctioned walkout,” she said. “What are you doing?”
Her only published piece in the high school paper was a letter to the editor in which she made the case for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. It was not well received on the mostly liberal campus. Because of her conservative views in general and her support of Mr. Trump in particular, she was ostracized by her peers, she said.
“Maybe the trope that everything goes back to high school trauma is true,” she added.
During her senior year, after she learned she had gotten into the University of Chicago, she more or less stopped going to class. She skipped her high school graduation day because she was flying to Washington to start working as an intern for Mr. Kassam, who was then a “War Room” co-host. She also missed out on prom. “It was the best thing I ever did,” she said.
During her first year of college, Ms. Winters became a “War Room” staff writer. She frequently commuted to Washington instead of attending class. “My best friend from college is, like, Steve,” she said, referring to Mr. Bannon. As Covid spread across the globe, she made her first on-camera appearance.
“The pandemic’s really where she got her sea legs,” Mr. Bannon said in a phone interview. He used some baseball-scout lingo to describe Ms. Winters, calling her “a five-tool player.”
She has raised her visibility with her appearances on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” a YouTube talk show hosted by the former CNN personality. “She is always a lively and provocative contributor, even if I don’t agree with many of her views,” Mr. Morgan said by text. But Ms. Winters insists she’d be happy spending her days sifting through federal databases.
“She’s essentially a nerd at heart,” Mr. Bannon said.
One of the biggest feuds on the right has been between Ms. Winters’s boss and Elon Musk, who, with the president’s blessing, has embedded himself within the federal government. At the height of the rift, Mr. Bannon called Mr. Musk a “truly evil person.” In response, Mr. Musk wrote on X: “Bannon is a great talker but not a great doer.”
The spat has put Ms. Winters in a unique position. Mr. Musk is one of her 630,000 followers on X, and he frequently reposts her. She has lauded him and his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency.
“I think I’m the only person who could bring them together and get peace,” she said, laughing.
Ms. Winters may be a White House correspondent, but her job is not so much to cover Mr. Trump’s avalanche of executive actions as it is to report and comment on what she labels “opposition forces,” whether they be Democratic politicians, liberal organizations or major news outlets.
Hugo Lowell, a White House correspondent for The Guardian, said that Ms. Winters differs from other reporters on the beat because she is “vocal about her own political views and clearly infuses them into her coverage.”
“But she’s good on TV,” Mr. Lowell added, “and she has built up an audience with Trump’s base that translates to a degree of influence in a fragmented media ecosystem.”
Ms. Winters compared the White House briefing room to high school. “This is my first time in a professional setting where my MAGA royalty clout means nothing,” she said.
Her outsider status was confirmed when the National Press Club rejected her bid to become a member. Asked about the denial of Ms. Winters’s application, a spokesperson for the organization, which was founded in 1908 and has roughly 2,500 members, said: “Decisions are made in alignment with the standards of journalism we uphold. We do not publicly comment on individual applications out of respect for all involved.”
Many White House reporters affiliated with large news organizations do not talk to her, Ms. Winters said, and several of them contacted for this article declined to comment. But, ultimately, someone who has blasted much of the news media as “ground zero of left-wing opposition to Trump” was always going to be in for a chilly reception.
At Butterworth’s, true to her word, Ms. Winters had only bottled water during our three-hour talk.
She said she has had two drinks in her life and has never done drugs. She also has a budding lifestyle brand. Items for sale include a tank top with “More insecure than the border” plastered across the front and a tote that reads “A little conspiratorial.”
Her cable news network of choice is MSNBC, which she watches partly to generate material. She said that in another world she might have been a poetry professor. “I always joke — in my day-to-day life, I really am a lib at heart,” she said.
She also loved “Barbie” and agreed with the monologue delivered by America Ferrera, in which her character says, “It is literally impossible to be a woman.” But, Ms. Winters caveats, “It’s also really hard to be a man.” She added that scores of women younger than she had asked her not only for career advice but also for tips on how to be like her.
Like a growing Gen-Z contingent, she is “anti-app,” meaning dating apps. One day, she would like to settle down with a man she can be “submissive” to, she said. She added that she had been wronged in past relationships, which only stoked her ambitions.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to get revenge,” she said. “You can watch me on TV being the next big deal.’”
Sunday Puzzle
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This week’s challenge
Today’s puzzle is a tribute to Mimi. Every answer is a familiar two word phrase or name in which each word starts with the letters MI-.
Ex. Assignment for soldiers –> MILITARY MISSION
1. Pageant title for a contestant from Detroit
2. One of the Twin Cities
3. Nickname for the river through New Orleans
4. Super short skirt
5. Neighborhood in Los Angeles that contains Museum Row
6. Just over four times the distance from the earth to the moon
7. Goateed sing-along conductor of old TV
8. American financier who pioneered so-called “junk bonds”
9. Little accident
10. Land-based weapon in America’s nuclear arsenal
11. In “Snow White,” the evil queen’s words before “on the wall”
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge comes from Benita Rice, of Salem, Ore. Name a famous foreign landmark (5,4). Change the eighth letter to a V and rearrange the result to make an adjective that describes this landmark. What landmark is it?
Answer
Notre Dame –> Renovated
Winner
Chee Sing Lee of Bangor, Maine
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from James Ellison, of Jefferson City, Mo. Think of a popular movie of the past decade. Change the last letter in its title. The result will suggest a lawsuit between two politicians of the late 20th century — one Republican and one Democrat. What’s the movie and who are the people?
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, April 23 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
This story is part of Image’s April’s Thresholds issue, a tour of L.A. architecture as it’s actually experienced.
A landmark is a landmark because it tells you that you’re home now — the piece of earth you’ve chosen to inhabit saying, “You’ve made it back, congratulations.” We identify our cities with their landmarks, and because we identify with our cities, we identify with the landmarks too. They are us and we are them, mirroring each other through eternity. A city like New York or Chicago, with the Chrysler Building, the Bean, etc., has landmarks that exist in the world’s popular consciousness. But L.A.’s most cherished landmarks belong to us and us alone, a secret you’re let in on if you live here long enough and pay attention.
The Fashion Nova baddie in horizontal sprawl off the Vertigo, for example, is an emblem for those in the know. Our twisted version of a capitalist guardian angel, patron saint of spandex in a cropped matching set. Welcome to El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Fashion Nova. Merging on the 110 South from the 10 East while the sunset burns and traffic thickens is a miracle in more ways than one, and in the spirit of compulsively performing the sign of the cross when you pass a church on the freeway, this billboard is deserving of its own acknowledgment.
It may not be the landmark L.A. asked for, but in Sayre Gomez’s painting “Vertigo,” you begin to understand why it’s the one we deserve. At the opening for “Precious Moments,” Gomez’s solo show at David Kordansky, the room was vibrating. A game of energetic ping-pong unfolded underneath the gallery’s fluorescent light, beams of identification, recollections or stabs of grief bouncing off each piece in the exhibition. People were seeing hyperspecific parts of a city they love reflected in a hyperspecific way — for better and for worse. Recognition has two edges and they both happen to be sharp. Gomez twists the knife deeper for a good cause: He wants you not just to look but to really see.
In his work exist iconic signs of beloved local establishments — like the Playpen — the blinding glint reflecting off downtown’s skyline, telephone poles regarded as totems. The line to see Gomez’s replica of L.A.’s graffiti towers, “Oceanwide Plaza,” snaked through the gallery’s courtyard. Once inside, at least three graffiti writers whose names were blasted on the replica pointed it out proudly, even gave out stickers to take home. The truth can be beautiful and it can be ugly — in this case it’s both — on the flip side showing up in the form of smog, tattered flags and an abandoned graffiti tower that starkly represents the pitfalls of capitalism and greed, a neon arrow pointing to the homelessness crisis.
Because the Vertigo is something everybody who lives here recognizes as central to a sort of framework of Los Angeles. And I think the encampment has become that as well. It’s connecting these integral components — something that’s more revelatory and more fun with something that’s more grave.
— Sayre Gomez
In the main gallery, I was stuck on “Vertigo.” On the 12-foot canvas, my eye went to the place out of focus: the thin strip of billboard in the background featuring a young woman with sand-dune hips, patent knee-high boots and long black hair laid up on her side, wearing cat ears and a tiger bodysuit as flush as second skin. The model made the kind of eye contact that felt dangerous — might cause an accident if you’re not careful. “#1 Halloween Destination … FASHION NOVA,” it read. I knew her, anyone who has driven through the two main arteries of Los Angeles knows her. The black-and-white smiley motif of the Vertigo, an events space, sat right next to her face, just happy to be there, it seemed, above a painted sign that says “Ready to Party?”
The sky was the color of cotton candy, but the stale kind that’s been hardening in a plastic bag for days after the fair. Something rancid about it. In the foreground of the painting was a car encampment with a tattered floral sheet woven through the windows, cloth tarps and couch cushions creating a shield against the elements. Small plastic children’s toys lined at the top of the car — dinosaurs and dump trucks and sharks — creating their own shrunken skyline in front of the Vertigo, signaling that young kids likely lived there. It’s less juxtaposition for juxtaposition’s sake and more an accurate reflection of the breakneck duality of living in a place like L.A.
Even angels exist within the context of their environments. Our Fashion Nova baddie hangs off the Vertigo, a building that has used its ad space as physical clickbait and political posturing for over a decade. It’s promoting the kind of fast fashion brand that’s been regarded as a case study on the industry’s environmental impact. In the years the billboard has been up, it’s looked over dozens and dozens of car encampments like the one depicted in Gomez’s piece.
She feels dubious, yes. But no less like ours.
Julissa James: I’ve lived in L.A. for 13 years now. For me, the city and the architecture of the city is less the Frank Lloyd Wrights and Frank Gehrys — there’s that — but other landmarks that signal, “Oh, I’m home.” The Fashion Nova baddie above the Vertigo has always been that for me. Your piece is layered and there’s so much more to it than just that, but that’s the first thing I saw and was like, “Whoa. I need to talk to Sayre. We need to talk about ‘Vertigo.’”
Sayre Gomez: It’s like L.A.’s Statue of Liberty. It’s the city of anti-landmarks, you know what I mean? I mean, there’s the Hollywood sign, which I think is so telling, because it’s the remnants of a real estate venture. The city is built by real estate schemes and 100 years later we’re feeling the effects of it. You’ve got empty skyscrapers and a massive homeless catastrophe. L.A. doesn’t really have real landmarks. It has anti-landmarks.
JJ: When did the Fashion Nova billboard above the Vertigo click for you as something that felt representative of the city, or something that you wanted to depict?
SG: My studio is in Boyle Heights, so I pass that billboard multiple times a week. This is my 20th year in L.A. and that building’s always been a big mystery to me. It was empty when I moved here before this guy Shawn Farr bought it and turned it into Casa Vertigo. I think he probably makes more money on it with the ad space than anything. I know nobody who has ever been there. Very mysterious to me. So that’s what I was drawn to.
(Paul Salveson from David Kordansky Gallery)
The Vertigo has always been mysterious to me. And that whole fashion industry is mysterious to me — the kind of shmatta, American Apparel-adjacent, or maybe coming out of the wake of that. These kinds of businesses, or the representations of these businesses, how do they function and how do they flourish? Is it aboveboard? What more perfectly encapsulates that than that building? It’s this weird thing you can’t quite figure out but somehow it has a lot of money and then it’s an event space, supposedly billed as that. Clearly it’s this big ad thing, and I’m very interested in the changing dynamics of capital. The capital of yesteryear, which was based on the brick and mortar, where things are being made in a specific location, maybe on an assembly line or in a specific way, to a kind of capital that is based solely on advertising or on viewership. These beautiful buildings acting as pedestals for some kind of ad space, you know? It becomes an anti-landmark for me. Something where I’m like, “Oh, there’s that thing again.”
JJ: It’s this gorgeous Beaux Arts building …
SG: It’s a Freemason building!
JJ: When I’ve talked to some people about the Vertigo, they’re like, “the Fashion Nova building?”
SG: They always have the woman in the same pose — same pose, different clothes. If you remember before Fashion Nova, they would have these provocative ad campaigns or provocative slogans. “Twerk Miley” was up, remember that? They did a Trump one: “TRUMP NOW.” They did one for Kanye when he ran for president. The 10 and the 110 are literally the crossroads of the city, so it’s really poised to be a special building. It has a special designation because of the location.
JJ: Talk to me about the process of doing this piece. Where did it start and how did it evolve?
SG: I was cruising around that vicinity trying to see if I could get a good vantage point to take photos of Vertigo. And then I stumbled upon this car — the car that’s in the foreground of the painting. Anytime I see an encampment that has kids’ toys, things that reference back to the lives of children, it hits hard. But I like to lay it all out there. I like to make things confrontational. I want it to be difficult. The painting isn’t based on a one-to-one photo [Gomez paints from a composite rendering of images he’s taken around town], but I knew that I wanted to use that car, and I knew I wanted to get the Vertigo building, and so I started just messing around with different iterations. I could never find a good angle to take a good photo of the building, so I just went on Vertigo’s website and I was like, “I’m just using these.” I switched the sky and put a more moody, atmospheric sky in.
JJ: Which I loved, because we know that feeling — you’re merging onto the 110 and you see a beautiful sunset. The euphoria of like, “L.A. is the best city in the world.” But you know what? What I found so interesting about your piece is that it was revealing to me about myself, but also about so many of us that live in L.A. and have lived here for years and have developed a jadedness. When I saw your piece, immediately I was like, “Oh my God, the Vertigo! The Vertigo! The Vertigo!” And then I was like, “OK, wait, hold on, there’s so much more going on here.” But the fact that my eye went to that first instead of the car encampment, the kids’ toys, brought up a lot of questions about my own relationship to the city and the things that we choose to see, the things that maybe we’ve seen so much of that we subconsciously filter it out. Why was it important for you to put these two things up against each other in this way?
SG: Because the Vertigo is something everybody who lives here recognizes as central to a sort of framework of Los Angeles. And I think the encampment has become that as well. It’s connecting these integral components — something that’s more revelatory and more fun with something that’s more grave. That’s what I’m doing in my work at large. I use the sunsets and the beauty to create a dialogue, to entice people to sort of look a little bit at how things are contextualized, how things act, what’s actually happening. I don’t make things in a vacuum. I was working on this show and I was going to really push this agenda of incorporating more of my experience with my kids into the work. That’s also a double-edged sword. I wanted to interject some levity, because the work can get so dark. I wanted to bring in some iconography from their world and things that they get excited about. When you’re juxtaposing that with really stark things, it becomes darker. I want to thicken the stock a little bit. Make things a little more complex.
Phil Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame works the 2019 NHL Awards at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on June 19, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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