“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”-George Orwell.
For previous entries, click here.
So, a few days ago, Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) said the following:
This is a reference to the fact that one of the aides that Trump took with him on Food Cart One was Natalie Harp, the woman known as The Human Printer because she follows Trump around with a portable printer so that he can have hard copies of articles and social media posts that praise him. She is also likely his main conduit for posting on Truth Social.
Harp first came to my attention back in November of 2024 when the NYT had this story (that I thought I included in a tab-clearing post, but can’t find it): Devoted Aide Who Keeps Good News Flowing Will Follow Trump to the White House.
A 33-year-old former far-right cable host, Ms. Harp is nearly always at Mr. Trump’s side. She has written him a series of devotional letters, including one that said, “You are all that matters to me.” Once, when Mr. Trump was playing golf in Scotland, she ran behind his cart to keep him up to date with positive stories and social media posts.
[…]She has no official title, but during the campaign, colleagues referred to her as the “human printer” because she followed Mr. Trump around with a portable printer and a battery pack to charge it, so she could hand him information in hard copy, as he prefers.
[…]
In 2023, Ms. Harp sent a series of letters to Mr. Trump that unnerved people around him, according to a half-dozen people with knowledge of them.
“You are all that matters to me,” she wrote in one of the letters, which were seen by The New York Times. The letters’ authenticity was confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of them.
“I don’t ever want to let you down,” Ms. Harp wrote, thanking Mr. Trump for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life.”
In another letter, she told Mr. Trump that she wanted to get back to “that synergy” she used to have with him, where “we’d talk about everything and nothing.”
“I want to bring you joy,” she wrote, “to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work.’”
At the White House, Ms. Harp is likely to serve a role unlike any presidential adviser in modern history.
Not to get overly technical, but that is all just plain weird. That sounds like poorly written dialog in a teen romance novel, and it does not sound like a healthy situation. It is not healthy for Harp, and it isn’t healthy for Trump.
The whole Ossoff comment has led to a rather remarkable eruption by Trump’s allies who have decided to take a quip and make it part of the news cycle for several days now. But should Harp be off limits for some reason? Especially since what Ossoff said was based in empirical fact?
Some of the critiques have been that there is innuendo in Ossoff’s observation that there is something sexual going on between Trump and Harp. But, of course, that requires others to read a lot into the phrase, “travel with Natalie.” Imagine that anyone could ever even think that Trump, who has cheated on all of his wives, would ever take advantage of a woman who follows him around like a puppy dog and says things like “I want to bring you joy”!
I have no idea if there is some sexual activity taking place, although I would be lying if I said that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. How could it not, given Trump’s history?
However, that is not why this story matters.
I agree with Paul Waldman at The Cross Section: Yes, We Absolutely Should Talk About Natalie Harp.
There is literally no single person who spends as much time at the side of the president of the United States as her; the idea that it should somehow be off-limits to discuss her role is bonkers.
[…]
She’s with Trump whether he’s in the White House, travelling to a foreign country, or golfing at one of his clubs, a proximity that has apparently caused a good deal of unease among his other staffers. As Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report in their book Regime Change, “Trump had taken to telling his staff that Natalie (or ‘Nathalie,’ as he would call her, using a French pronunciation) was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids. ‘All of you will go off and make money,’ he would say. ‘She’ll never leave me.’”
Harp is neither a Svengali nor a Rasputin, but in this White House, she’s an incredibly important figure. She is the most important channel through which he receives and distributes information, and because Trump is impulsive, mercurial, and has the emotional regulation of a toddler, the person most responsible for determining his psychological state is central to the work of the administration.
The issue is Trump and his need for such a person. I have my own concerns about Harp’s mental state, but they are somewhat beside the point.
The point is that Harp’s role provides clear evidence of Trump’s poor mental state and his need for constant affirmation. It provides yet another piece of evidence that he should not be in the position of power that he holds.
It also helps explain how he creates his mind palace wherein everything is fine. The Strait of Hormuz is ever-open, gas prices don’t matter, and the USS Lincoln needs an even longer deployment!
How might any of us behave if someone was following us around all day, putting print-outs of affirmations in our hands all day long while looking at us like she does Trump in practically every photo. See, for example, the one with this piece from the NYT: ‘With All My Heart, Natalie.’ Trump’s Most Devoted Aide Emerges (or any of the ones here).
She rarely speaks on camera and yet she is never not there, ever-present with a wide smile and her eyes fixed on the president.
She is Natalie Harp, the 35-year-old West Wing aide who is the utmost gatekeeper to President Trump, a one-woman conduit of information operating entirely outside the usual chain of command. The public’s interest in Ms. Harp exploded after she was revealed last week to be one of the lucky few who joined the president inside an airplane catering container to be whisked out of Turkey under threat of attack by Iran.
[…]
She is a platinum blonde geyser of positivity, there to buck him up when the going gets rough. She believes, or at least vehemently claims to believe, that he totally won the 2020 election. In the book “Regime Change,” by the New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Mr. Trump is described as explaining to people that Ms. Harp is the only one who loves him as much as his wife and children. All his other staff will go off and make money, Mr. Trump would say, but Ms. Harp will never leave him.
None of this is healthy, and it is right in front of our faces.
This is what the President of the United States wants and needs.
By the way, the notion that she is young and female makes her off limits for a national conversation is simply ludicrous, if not sexist. She is incredibly close to, and has influence over, the President of the United States. She is young relative to him, but 35 is not a child (indeed, only our current penchant for gerontocracy makes her seem especially young). Her gender is only relevant because of Trump’s own history of sexual dalliance.
Strip it all away, and the following two things make all of this matter.
- Definitionally, anyone who has the kind of access that Harp has to POTUS is worthy of public scrutiny.
- It matters that the most powerful man in the world needs the kind of constant affirmation that Harp appears to provide.
I would note, yet again, that Trump behaves in ways that none of us would tolerate in an employee, friend, or even family member, and yet he is entrusted with the nuclear codes and makes decisions daily that affect the lives of millions.
Update: Sure, this is normal and the kind of thing that we should expect at the highest levels of government, as reported by CNN: Meet Natalie Harp, the aide so close to Trump she once rode in an SUV trunk to accompany him.
It was October 2023, and Donald Trump was due at a New York City courthouse to fight his latest set of legal troubles. But as the motorcade idled outside his Trump Tower residence, staffers confronted a more immediate problem: There wasn’t room for Harp, the hyper-loyal aide whose devotion to Trump had quickly entrenched her within his orbit.
A screaming match in the lobby ensued, with Harp insisting that Trump had personally asked her to attend the court appearance, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Denied a seat but determined not to be left behind, Harp jumped into an SUV trunk, according to the two sources and confirmed by a photo obtained by CNN.
The episode, which has not been previously reported, served as an encapsulation of the role Harp has carved out in recent years as a constant and intensely dedicated presence at Trump’s side.
