Who is Natalie Harp? The 35-year-old “executive assistant” to Donald Trump has got Washington gums a-flapping over her closeness to the octogenarian commander-in-chief, not least after she was chosen to join him as he switched flights over the Middle East while leaving two of his most senior colleagues on a decoy.
As Rats in a Sack reported last month, Trump recently switched planes covertly on a trip home from Turkey amid concerns that his modified 747 could be targeted by Iranian missiles. But while secretary of state Marco Rubio and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent were left on the original plane with the Washington press corps, Trump found room on his new flight for Harp.
The revelation is fuelling further gossip about the relationship between Trump and Harp, who is 45 years his junior and rarely seen not at his side. Videos of the pair together at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, are circulating, while a series of letters Harp sent to Trump in 2023, in which she wrote “You are all that matters to me” and “I want to bring you joy” have resurfaced.
In Regime Change, New York Times journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman’s book about the second Trump presidency, Harp is nicknamed “The Human Printer” as she apparently carries around a literal mini-printer for Trump, who is obsessed with reading what people have written about him.
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Now the gossip has exploded into the open after Jon Ossoff, a Georgia senator who is being spoken of as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, used a rally speech to bring the name of Harp, not much known outside of Washington insider circles, to a wider public audience.
Ossoff, who is facing reelection later this year, told the audience in Atlanta: “While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings, he golfs, and trades stocks.
“He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
When CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked Trump directly about the comments in an Oval Office press conference on Monday, the increasingly sleepy president appeared not to have the energy to rise to the bait, saying: “You mean Pee-wee Herman [an unsettling 1980s US TV character]? Pee-wee Herman lookalike. Er, no, I would much rather do other things.” He then segued directly into another lengthy ramble on his White House ballroom.
But his goons have been much more forthcoming in hitting back. White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote on X that: “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck [an insult; don’t Google it] loser in politics. Instead of denigrating hard working people serving their country, Jon should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he’s a miserable person who hates this country.”
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Ossoff was a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama” and a “lightweight loser”.
Hmmm. Do you think they might be rattled much? As they used to say on British TV around the same time as Pee-wee Herman was conquering America: time for a cool sharp Harp!
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