In a scene from Tucker Carlson’s documentary on Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, the president and his aide, Natalie Harp, sit next to each other, surrounded by other staff, watching Kamala Harris formally accept the Democratic nomination.
Trump is seen dictating his Truth Social posts to Harp, who types them out, replete with his stylised syntax and Random Capitalisation. He watches, or asks questions of others in the room, while she punches the keys.
The clip has done the rounds on social media this week amid renewed focus on Harp. One X user commented: “This is probably one of the most important videos to understand how Trump’s mind works.”
Harp, who is 35 and now serves as the president’s executive assistant, is the bridge between Trump’s mouth and the keyboard, acting not as a co-creator or editor but as a conduit. In addition to taking dictation, she brings the president printed-out articles – typically from right-wing news sites – or draft posts for his approval.
‘You are all that matters to me.’
Purported note from Natalie Harp to Donald Trump
In March, following a controversy in which Trump’s account posted a video clip that included a racist meme, The Wall Street Journal reported that Harp often brings Trump recycled content from the internet that she and other aides think he would like. She had a portable printer, used to furnish Trump with fresh content while he was, say, on the golf course, and became known as “the human printer” herself.
Harp appears to have come to Trump’s attention in June 2019, during his first term, when she appeared on Fox News. Suffering from bone cancer, Harp had written a LinkedIn post thanking Trump for championing “right to try” laws that opened up experimental treatments to terminally ill patients.
“My oncologist didn’t tell me I had other options. Donald Trump did,” she said. Trump was booked for a phone interview on the same Fox & Friends episode. He posted to Twitter (now X) that Harp was a “GREAT guest” and exemplified the Right To Try Act’s “truly spectacular results”.
A year later, addressing the 2020 Republican National Convention, Harp took things further. “I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for you,” she told Trump.
However, reporting by The Washington Post disputes that narrative. The Post unearthed that Harp had already spoken online about her new treatment two months before Trump signed the Right To Try Act. The drug had already been approved.
Whatever the case, Harp’s dedication to the president was enduring. She served on his 2020 campaign advisory board, and while he was out of office, worked for far-right channel One America News Network, where she and others indulged his false claims about election fraud. Harp joined the Trump campaign for his 2024 tilt.
Even by the high standards of loyalty and devotion required of members of Trump’s White House, Harp stands alone. Her fealty to the president has, at times, raised eyebrows among those in their orbit, including the Secret Service, according to New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan, who co-wrote the recent book Regime Change.
Harp is a regular presence in the book, handing Trump files or sitting by his side with a laptop. The book also chronicles how Trump has told aides that Harp loves him as much as his wife and children, and that she is the only staffer who “will never leave me”.
Co-author Maggie Haberman told MS NOW on Sunday that Harp was effectively Trump’s “binky”, or comfort blanket. Swan and Haberman previously revealed that Harp had written affectionate notes to Trump, leaving them in his personal spaces, including one that said: “You are all that matters to me.”
Some stories about Harp may be apocryphal. Writer Michael Wolff has claimed that Harp spent a summer sleeping in a locker room at Trump’s New Jersey golf club after she was denied a permanent room. More recently, he claimed on Substack that Harp’s presence in Trump’s inner circle was threatening his marriage to first lady Melania Trump.
There is no evidence of an intimate relationship between Harp and Trump. White House spokesman David Ingle told The Daily Beast: “Michael Wolff is a professional scumbag and serial liar with shit for brains.”
But the White House is now having to confront the innuendo after Harp was one of the few aides to accompany Trump on a secret flight out of Turkey last month. Other senior officials, including cabinet secretaries, were left to fly on Air Force One despite an apparent threat from Iran.
At a rally, Democratic senator Jon Ossoff declared that Trump “wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar” rather than do his job.
On Monday, Trump happily answered a question from a CNN reporter on the topic, taking the opportunity to insult Ossoff. But later, he turned on her when she tried to ask another question about North Korea. And the White House communications team unleashed a current of abuse, telling the reporter her children would be ashamed of her for asking about the Harp matter.
MAGA commentators rounded on Ossoff for using Harp as a political tool and alluding to innuendo involving a young woman. Laura Loomer, a right-wing social media activist with the ear of the president, claimed reporters had been calling her for weeks trying to solicit a negative quote about Harp.
“I thought the left was all about female empowerment?” she wrote on X. “Are we now just assuming that every woman who works for a successful man is having sex with them? Democrats are hypocrites.”
There was debate among Democrats, too – though they were more likely to argue that Harp, as a White House staffer on the public payroll, was not shielded from scrutiny, and that Trump had created the febrile political environment in which people were going to hit back.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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