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How Trump’s Ever-Present Executive Assistant Became the Talk of Washington
Natalie Harp, a personal aide to the president, has become an object of fascination for both the left and right.
WASHINGTON—Sen. Jon Ossoff didn’t even use her full name. But everybody in Washington knew who he was talking about.
At a recent campaign event, the Georgia Democrat argued that President Trump would rather “travel with Natalie” on Air Force One than do the hard work that comes with being commander in chief.
The Natalie in question is Natalie Harp, a 35-year-old aide to Trump who has become an object of fascination for both the left and the right. Though she rarely speaks, she is an omnipresent figure at Trump’s side, standing just off camera during Oval Office events, traveling with the president around the country and the world, and tapping out his social-media posts.
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Ask HTVideos and photos of her interacting with the president have racked up millions of views online, becoming a new form of Trump-era clickbait.
To Democrats, Harp is one of the president’s chief enablers. For Republicans, she is Trump’s gatekeeper. A well-timed text to Harp can unlock access to Trump, giving well-known lobbyists and fringe figures alike an audience with the most powerful man in the world.
Ossoff’s comments about Harp were met with near-unanimous derision by conservatives, a rare moment of comity in a political movement beset by divisions. Some of Ossoff’s critics accused the senator of insinuating that the president and his executive assistant have an inappropriate relationship, a contention that the White House strenuously denies.
White House communications director Steven Cheung fired back with a vulgar insult. Scott Jennings, a conservative commentator, accused Ossoff of sexism and called him “a coward,” while Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, attacked Ossoff as “a mean-spirited jerk who traffics in slander.” Trump compared the Georgia senator to Pee-wee Herman.
Asked for comment, the Ossoff campaign referred to remarks the senator made in a Monday night interview with MS Now. Harp and other White House aides, Ossoff argued, aren’t telling the president “what he needs to hear.”
“The reality of it is, politics gets in the mud sometimes,” Rep. Julie Johnson (D., Texas) told CNN this week, defending Ossoff. The congresswoman said Trump and his political allies have long made pointed attacks against their opponents, arguing they “resort to the worst of the playground antics.”
The intensity of the pushback from Republicans underscored an ironclad truth inside the White House: Harp, according to current and former administration officials, is practically untouchable.
Harp spends more time with Trump than any other aide, according to current and former administration officials. She sits at a desk immediately outside the Oval Office. During meetings, Harp can often be found next to Trump, armed with a laptop and phones so she can quickly get the president any contact or piece of information he needs, the officials said.
Harp is one of a small number of aides with direct access to Trump’s Truth Social account. She often brings the president stacks of printed-out draft social-media posts for his approval. Trump sometimes dictates posts to Harp, who posts them on his behalf from her iPhone. She has learned to mimic Trump’s cadence and unique punctuation, the officials said.
Harp serves as both a buffer and sounding board for the president, a role that has at times frustrated some White House staff, according to people familiar with the matter. Some administration officials have privately complained that Harp has shown the president material from far-right groups that is riddled with false or misleading information.
The shortest path to getting something on the Resolute Desk, the people said, is often through Harp. One person close to the White House said that Harp’s cellphone number is even more precious than Trump’s.
White House officials say Harp hasn’t taken a single vacation day since joining the Trump administration and remains in constant contact with the president, sitting in on Situation Room meetings, Oval Office meetings and meetings aboard Air Force One in his private office.
While all executive staff work for the president, Harp reports exclusively to Trump and no one else, according to people familiar with the dynamic. She has at times ruffled feathers among White House aides by immediately following through on Trump’s directives without first checking in with the chief of staff, the communications office or the national security team.
Earlier this year, at Trump’s direction, Harp posted a video that included racist imagery depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and an AI-generated image of Trump as a Christ-like figure, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The White House deleted both posts after Trump faced bipartisan criticism. Some people close to the White House said Harp was unfairly blamed for Trump’s posts, noting that the president signs off on all of his social-media content.
Harp is known for mostly keeping to herself. But despite her best efforts at anonymity, the low-key aide had attracted plenty of attention online even before Ossoff’s barb. A cottage industry of online content farmers regularly post video clips and pictures of the staffer entering and exiting the Oval Office, boarding Marine One and working by Trump’s side. She is often looking directly at the president and smiling.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle called Harp “one of the most loyal and hardest working aides on President Trump’s team.” He criticized Ossoff and said he is advancing liberal policy priorities that Republicans consider extreme. The White House declined to make Harp available for an interview.
Harp, who grew up in a conservative Christian household in California, was diagnosed with Stage 2 bone cancer roughly a decade ago. She credits the Right to Try Act—a law signed by Trump in 2018 that allows some terminally ill patients to take unproven drugs for emergency use—with saving her life.
In 2020, Harp was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention about her experience. Harp later joined the conservative One America News Network, where she anchored a weekday evening program from 2020 to 2022 and frequently defended the president’s false claims of a stolen election. She left her television job in 2022 to work for Trump as an executive assistant when many Republicans in Washington had written Trump off.
At Mar-a-Lago, Harp sometimes accompanied Trump onto the golf course ready to print out articles from a golf cart, earning her the nickname “human printer” from some aides.
Trump, according to some officials, views Harp almost as part of his family. Once, after his Georgia indictment, Trump remarked on his private plane that Harp is the only one who actually cares about him, according to a person familiar with the remarks.
But her devotion to the president has, at times, crossed a line for some of Trump’s aides, according to people familiar with the matter. “You are all that matters to me,” Harp wrote in letters to Trump in 2023, the people said. The letters were earlier reported by the New York Times.
Before entering the larger MAGA universe, she worked on Republican congressional campaigns and was known to send flowers to candidates who had come up short in their races. A colleague of Harp’s at the time said she paid for the arrangements out of her own pocket.
Write to Philip Wegmann at philip.wegmann@wsj.com, Meridith McGraw at Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com and Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com
