Natalie Harp: Backstory and set off for govt assistant’s devotion to Donald Trump
Among the fascinating details in Donald Trump’s weird Turkey plane swap caper was who he took with him on the secret jet out of Ankara.
You could pretty much understand Pete Hegseth being on Trump’s plane during the sneaky escape – although the concept of being in an enclosed metal tube with him for several hours doesn’t bear thinking about.
But also in this select entourage was a 35-year-old blonde woman named Natalie.
Also known as “the human printer”, Natalie Harp is Donald Trump’s executive assistant. She gained that nickname because of her tendency to print out papers for Trump – often flattering news stories – at any time of the day or night.
During a rally in Atlanta over the weekend, Democrat Senator Jon Ossoff – whom many (including me) have tipped as a future presidential candidate – accused Trump of wanting to “travel with Natalie” rather than of of perform his Presidential duties. The rather pointed remark has ignited a flurry of interest in Harp, and what exactly her relationship with Trump is.
She’s an exceptionally visible member of the administration despite not having a public-facing role – simply because she is almost always where Trump is. She’s always somewhere in the background, often with an armful of A4 printouts, neatly paper clipped together and ready to deploy.
She was previously a presenter for One America News Network, a right-wing propaganda outlet, where she would often end her show either with a bible verse …or a quote from Trump, introducing his outbursts as if he were some kind of divine prophet: “Remember what Trump said…”
After coming on Trump’s radar by praising him over legislation he championed that she said had allowed her to get experimental treatment for bone cancer, she joined his 2024 campaign as an aide. And from there she was hired by the administration as an executive assistant to the President.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan included fascinating nuggets about her character in their book Regime Change, which came out in June, and in an earlier article for the Times. They report that she left “intimate letters” to Trump during the campaign. “You are all that matters to me,” she’s said to have written.
“I don’t ever want to let you down…I want to bring you joy.”
The Secret Service were, by all accounts, perturbed by the letters, left for him in his “personal spaces”.
But beyond her obvious proximity to Trump, a lot of the most fascinating tales of her closeness with the President are the stuff of legend – and are mostly recounted second-hand or through unnamed sources.
There’s the tale of her being so eager to be close to Trump that when his campaign team moved from Palm Beach to his golf club at Bedminster, New Jersey in 2023, and she was not given a room – she set up a bed in the the women’s locker room and spent several months sleeping there.
There are varying claims about how much access she has to his social media accounts – and which of his more contentious posts she has been involved in.
Moreover, there are claims that she has access to other of his communications – texts and emails.
And Trump, early in his second term, is said to have told his team Natalie was “the only one who loved him as much as his wife and his kids.”
To get more stories, gossip and analysis like this in your inbox every week, sign up for The US Dispatch, our weekly newsletter that keeps tabs on Donald Trump so you don’t have to. Here’s some more excerpts from this week’s newsletter
Kim Jong chill
North Korea has 57 nukes, Trump declared on Wednesday, as he led journalists on a tour of the construction site that is the White House South Lawn.
Trump is having a helipad installed on the lawn because the new Marine Ones keep scorching the grass. When the installation was first underway, it followed the camber of the hill atop which is the White House. Trump didn’t like that, it was reported at the time, because he wanted it level with the horizon. And during his tour of the site yesterday, he let slip that another reason he wanted it flat was so he could host cocktail parties on the landing pad.
He later proudly declared that the new grass to be laid on the lawn had been supplied for free by the Scotts Miracle Gro company, a donor to his campaign and Super PAC. Scotts also distributes Roundup, and has benefited from a Trump-signed executive order that declared such herbicides “critical to US national and economic security”.
Anyway, somewhere between admitting to a huge conflict of interest and declaring himself “really good at flagpoles”, Trump put a number on Kim Jong-un’s nuclear arsenal. Which he’s almost certainly not supposed to say out loud in front of a bunch of contractors and journalists, and definitely when he’s being beamed live to TVs and computers around the world.
Trump has been back on his “little Rocket Man” love-in this week. He posted a picture of him and Kim taken during his first term – back when a President alienating America’s natural allies while cosying up to its enemies was a novel event.
Then on Sunday night he had a direct pop at South Korea, announcing he would be scaling back American involvement in a series of military drills alongside Seoul, and branding the plans “inappropriate and hostile”. Trump later explained that his was partly out of revenge for South Korea refusing to help with the war on Iran. Which is not an unreasonable position for South Korea to take, given they get 60% of their oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
But there we have it – we have a President proudly, or at least absent-mindedly admitting to huge conflicts of interest, cosying up to one of the world’s most reviled dictators and wanting to host cocktail parties on the White House helipad all on the same day. Now, what else has been going on…
High steaks
Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, has been spotted meeting with a potential candidate to replace Karoline Leavitt as mouthpiece of the administration.
She reportedly sat down for a spot of dinner with Scott Jennings – which does not surprise me. He’s a MAGA blowhard who mostly appears on CNN panel shows, and has an apparently limitless appetite for saying whatever the President might want him to say, no matter how preposterous or offensive it is.
No surprise he’s being sounded out for the Press Secretary vacancy, then. What did surprise me was their choice of dinner venue.
Morton’s is a longtime staple of Washington’s steakhouse scene, but its main differentiator is the long outdoor terrace where people go to smoke cigars.
Point is, there are many classier restaurants in the Capital, and eateries that are more MAGA friendly than catering to cigar-chomping lobbyists and congressmen.
Not to mention there are many more private places to eat. In fact, I’d argue Morton’s is probably one of the more surveilled rooms in Washington DC – both by nosey senators, and in the 2019 case of Democrat Senator Bob Menendez, the FBI. (He’d taken to meeting Egyptian officials there, from whom he accepted bribes, a court later heard).
An odd choice of venue for a quiet chat.
