It can be tricky being a woman with a feminist outlook covering Trump’s White House. We all know a woman’s appearance should have no bearing on her job, and mentioning the clothing, hair or make-up of a woman in politics is a sure way to trivialise and demean her.
But then along came all the president’s women, and it became clear that personal grooming had become political. From former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s camouflage leggings and lip gloss to the interchangeable blonde hair of his press team, a very particular MAGA aesthetic has emerged.
Superficial appearances – whether that be the Oval Office, proposed monuments in Washington DC, or his coterie of female staff – are of the utmost importance to a president with a background in real estate, reality TV and beauty pageants. Plastic surgery is also a prominent feature, leading to a new Trumpian phenomenon known as “Mar-a-Lago face”.
And for the women in Trump’s orbit, sporting a hyper-feminised look projects a message: by conforming to his standards of female beauty, they are signalling their absolute loyalty to the president and to his cause.
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And of all the MAGA blondes, Natalie Harp is the most devout. One of Trump’s closest aides, she is so devoted to her boss that she leaves him adoring notes and has slept in locker rooms and hidden herself in car boots just to be close to him.
In a series of letters from Harp to Trump, she told the president, “you are all that matters to me.” Written in 2023, Harp told Trump she was jealous of the other women in his administration, “whose only job seems to be to talk with you and look pretty”, adding “I want that job”. In another letter, she told Trump: “I never want to bring you anything but joy.”
Harp has been called Trump’s “human printer”, as her key role has been to follow the president around with a portable printer, supplying him with positive news reports and social media posts. Sometimes, she reads them aloud to him, making sure he feels appreciated 24/7.
She first came to Trump’s attention as an adoring fan speaking on Fox News. Harp credits Trump’s policies during his first administration with allowing her to access experimental treatments which cured her bone marrow cancer, and she believes he saved her life.
Now an executive assistant who is rarely away from his side, Harp’s role includes drafting Trump’s Truth Social posts, fielding messages from world leaders, and acting as the chief gatekeeper – and security blanket – to the US president.
The 35-year-old had done this largely under the radar, but news of her peculiar zeal made the pages of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s recent Trump opus, Regime Change, where she was described as “the only one who loved [Trump] as much as his wife and kids [loved Trump]”.
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Then it emerged that Harp was one of the chosen few who had transferred to a decoy plane after security services identified a potential Iranian threat to Air Force One as it left Turkey after the July Nato summit. Secretary of state Marco Rubio and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent were left to fend for themselves on the original plane, but an assistant whose chief task seems to be to make the president feel loved was considered too important to lose.
This titbit was seized upon by Jon Ossoff, a democratic senator with presidential ambitions, who remarked at a campaign rally that Trump would rather “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie” than govern the country.
This propelled the story to new heights, and more revelations about Harp’s adulatory behaviour have emerged. Her brother claimed that she has an “unhealthy obsession” with Trump.
The New York Times reported that she was seen sprinting alongside the president’s golf buggy on a trip to Scotland in 2023, something for which she apologised in one of her leaked letters to Trump, in excruciating terms. “I also am sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland,” she wrote. “The first day I was told there were no carts, and people walked, which is why I walked. The second day, I was specifically asked by, I forget who his name was, but one of the main people who worked there, if I could continue walking, and tell any other girls who would head out there to do the same to spare the Course any more Carts. If there is anything else I have done to cause you trouble, please forgive me.”
No one bar chat show host Rosie O’Donnell (who joked that for Trump it was “time to hang up your wig and let Natalie tuck you in”) is suggesting anything beyond a professional relationship, but theirs is definitely a bizarre one. And the pair clearly share aesthetic tastes. Regime Change notes that while other people kept silent as Trump filled the White House with garish gold objects, Harp “would gush with delight” at the gilt urns, chalices, and cherubs filling every nook and cranny.
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Which brings us back to Harp’s hair, which is the same shade of platinum blonde as Trump’s own. It is notable that when Harp spoke at a conservative conference back in 2019, she had much darker hair and a less polished look. Harp’s current bleached hair and chiselled, made-up face differ sharply from the girl-next-door of seven years ago.
She appears to understand that the president doesn’t just want a highly competent, devoted assistant. He wants a show of traditional female subservience that will appeal to the “family values”-obsessed Christian conservatives of his base, but packaged in a way that matches his own taste for Barbie-like perfection. That entails blow-dries, expectations of a gym-toned body, and even Botox and fillers.
It is not clear whether this is ever explicitly vocalised, or just implicitly taken for granted, but it reflects an unsettling undercurrent of misogyny in the Trump administration.
Trump’s derogatory comments about women are well documented. Elsewhere in his cabinet, vice president JD Vance memorably denigrated Democratic women as “childless cat ladies”. Defence secretary Pete Hegseth invited a preacher who believes women should be denied the right to vote to lead prayers at the Pentagon.
Many key figures in his administration have extolled traditional gender roles, with deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller recently telling a conference that beauty is “a perfect family with a perfect life and a perfect job and perfect kids that goes to church every Sunday”. He went on to say that “leftists” are “all deformed in some way”.
In her way, Harp is the embodiment of this ethos: the idealised vision of womanhood as seen through the male gaze, the hyper-feminine appearance intended only to please the men in their lives.
While this could be interpreted as a harmless byproduct of Trump’s preference for style over substance, there are policy consequences to this attitude. These range from the administration’s campaign to remove transgender people from public life, to dismantling funding for reproductive rights.
Of course, the men in Trump’s orbit are also subjected to comments about their appearance. Trump has been buying male cabinet members his favourite brand of shoes to smarten them up.
But it is noticeable that, of the women Trump appointed to cabinet posts, most have now been removed: Kristi Noem, attorney general Pam Bondi, national intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard and labour secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer have all been sacked or resigned this year. They have been replaced by men.
Trump will also soon lose his press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who found it impossible to juggle being a mother to two young children with the demands of the post.
But Natalie Harp isn’t going anywhere. Limpet-like, she clings to his side, with Trump telling advisors that she “will never leave me”. She reportedly barely sleeps and eats, so zealously does she pursue her purpose in life to please Trump.
In doing so, she appears to have unlocked the secret to being a woman and keeping your job in the White House: absolute, slavish devotion.
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