Who is Natalie Harp, Trump's right-hand woman? - Kahawatungu
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Few people in US President Donald Trump’s orbit have appeared as frequently by his side as Natalie Harp in recent years. One of Trump’s longest-serving and most loyal aides, 35-year-old Harp is trusted with typing out his Truth Social posts, among other top responsibilities.
She was thrust again into the spotlight this week by Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff – a Democrat and frequent Trump foil – when he name-checked her during a speech that has since gone viral.
Ossoff attacked Trump’s “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar”.
He was referring to the new Air Force One plane, as well as to reports that Harp joined Trump – and a small group of people – when he secretly swapped planes leaving Turkey last month.
Here is what you need to know about the Trump assistant who has been called both a “gatekeeper” and a “comfort blanket”.
Following an unorthodox path to the White House
A California native and member of a conservative Christian family, Harp followed an unorthodox path into an already unconventional White House.
She rose to fame by crediting Trump with saving her life.
In his first term, Trump got the Right to Try Act passed to give some patients greater access to experimental treatments, which Harp used for her bone cancer.
She quickly gained prominence and popularity in Trump’s Maga (Make America Great Again) wing of the Republican party by talking about the experience, and soon after joined an advisory board for Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.
“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no-one wanted me in their clinical trials,” she said at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
“They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”
After the event, Trump said: “She lit up the television screen like very few people I have ever seen do it.”Following Trump’s loss in that election, Harp found work hosting a show at the conservative One America News Network, or OAN.
There, she became known as a ferocious Trump defender and promoter of false claims that he won the 2020 election. She left the network in 2022 to join Trump’s next presidential campaign.
Most accounts of Trump’s views of Harp come via anonymous second-hand sources in books by reporters such as Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan or Michael Wolff, and very little is publicly known about her private life.
“Trump is like everything that my mom taught us to respect,” her brother Preston Harp said during a CNN interview on Tuesday. “So I think that’s where her infatuation for Trump comes from honestly.”
He added that Harp was fixated on the White House from a young age and had written letters to previous presidents, including George W Bush, during the Iraq war.
He told CNN her “dream came true finally” when she got to the White House and that his sister was Trump’s “biggest fan, so that’s probably why he likes her”.
“And she’s good looking, she’s got a good personality. She thinks that he saved her life, so somebody living with that kind of gratitude must feel pretty good,” he said.
Harp’s official title at the White House is executive assistant to the president, which typically denotes a lower tier position that entails managing logistics, scheduling, communications flow and mundane – but vital – secretarial work.
By all accounts, though, Harp has given the role new meaning and her profile is significantly higher than that of her predecessors, such as Madeleine Westerhout in Trump’s first administration.
How influential is Harp?
When a CNN reporter earlier this week asked Trump about Ossoff’s comments, the White House reacted angrily later on its official X account, saying the reporter, Kristen Holmes, had taken a “cheap shot” at a staff member.
“Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question,” another post directed to Holmes read. “They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive.”
Harp’s presence as a staffer is nearly constant in Trump’s second term.
Reporters at the White House frequently see her standing just feet away from Trump in the Oval Office or boarding Air Force One for many of his domestic and international trips.
“She’s always around,” one source close to the White House told the BBC. “Literally, always.”
Among White House insiders and members of the press, she is often referred to as the “human printer” because she is often spotted carrying a portable printer to provide Trump with hard copies of articles and social media posts, which he prefers.
In practice, this means that Harp has an outsized ability to control what information or updates Trump receives, according to another source familiar with White House operations.
Other anonymous sources have described her to US media outlets as a “gatekeeper” and “comfort blanket”.
Harp also serves as something of a social media scribe for Trump, posting to his Truth Social account on his behalf.
In one image that has been widely shared in the aftermath of Ossoff’s comments, Harp is shown typing a post – in the president’s own writing style – as he dictates to her while watching a speech of Kamala Harris in 2024.
Amid the recent focus on Harp, the White House has described her as a “trusted and valued” member of the team, although Trump has rarely spoken about her on camera.
Ossoff was one of many Trump critics who noted Harp was reportedly on the plane that the president boarded to leave Turkey after the US supposedly received information about a threat from Iran.
Reporter Haberman, who has also reported extensively on Trump’s presidencies, was asked during an appearance on the news network MSNOW why Trump took Harp with him on the secret plane: “Because she is sort of his binky, for lack of a better way of putting it, a comfort blanket.”
Haberman and Swan reported for the New York Times in 2024 that Harp had supposedly written in a letter to Trump: “You are all that matters to me.”
By BBC News
Reporting originally appeared via Kahawa Tungu. Read the full source for additional context.