Sen. Jon Ossoff mentioned a name most Americans had never heard, and the White House and right-wing media freaked out. It seems he’d touched a nerve.
Ossoff’s words should have barely registered. At a campaign rally in Atlanta on Sunday, the Georgia Democrat criticized Trump’s handling of the war with Iran, telling the crowd the president “sleeps through his meetings, he golfs and trades stocks.” Ossoff continued: “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
He was referring to Natalie Harp, aka the “Human Printer” and Ivanka clone who is nearly always at Trump’s side these days. In response, the White House communications team launched vulgar and personal attacks on Ossoff while rallying to Harp’s defense. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung tweeted,
“Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck 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. It’s because he’s a radical, extremist Dumocrat.”
Super mature.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle called Ossoff a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama,” adding, “Nobody gives a shit what this lightweight loser says.” He separately called Harp “one of the most loyal and hardest working aides on President Trump’s team.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, apparently having gotten the same memo, used identical language, calling her “one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump’s team.”
Later on Monday, Trump was asked by a CNN reporter about Ossoff’s comment. Trump did not address the Harp question directly, instead mocking Ossoff. “You mean Pee-wee Herman? Pee-wee Herman look-alike?” Trump replied. A White House-run social media account then attacked the reporter in personal terms, invoking her children, apparently for daring to bring up the subject.
Right-wing media soon followed suit with its condemnations. Radio host Hugh Hewitt said Ossoff should apologize to Harp, calling him “a ridiculous caricature of a senator” and “a mean-spirited jerk who traffics in slander.” Fellow radio host Larry O’Connor argued the comment amounted to “an attack on a young woman who works in the White House,” writing that Ossoff was “using her as collateral damage in a feeble attempt to go viral.”
So what gives? Why are the White House and right-wing media so sensitive about Harp, and why are they circling the wagons over what felt like a minor jab?
To understand this, let’s take a closer look at who Harp is, what her role has been in Trump’s circle—particularly as his information funnel and as someone with access to his social media—and why everyone from the Secret Service to Harp’s brother is concerned about her close relationship with the president.
“That young, beautiful woman”
Harp first entered Trump’s orbit in 2019 the way many around Trump do: via Fox News. She was on the network talking about the federal “right-to-try” experimental-drug access law that Trump signed in May 2018, and she credited it with giving her access to the experimental treatment she claims saved her life after she developed bone cancer. Trump first spoke publicly about her on Fox & Friends that June, calling her “that young, beautiful woman.”
Shortly thereafter, at the 2019 Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, Trump called Harp onstage, praising her glowingly. “She lit up the television screen like very few people I’ve ever seen do it,” Trump said. Footage from the pro-Trump documentary “Art of the Surge” shows him introducing Harp at that same conference and connecting her being alive to his policies. “They were preparing her for death... and because of ‘right to try,’ she’s now living, and I think doing phenomenally well.”
Harp responded, playing up the connection. “I had cancer and he saved my life, signed that bill, and ever since he found out, he stayed in touch with me. Made sure I was OK.” She credited Trump and spoke of his supposed sacrifices, saying, “He gave up his quality of life so we could live and work and fight with dignity—because he believes in survival of the fighters, not the fittest.”
“The Art of the Surge,” filmed at Mar-a-Lago, also contains footage of Harp explaining her political awakening under Trump. “Politics was never something I liked,” she said. “But when I was sick, I started watching the Republican debates. He was my first exposure to politics, and I loved it. Like, this guy, he gets it.” (This is probably misleading; if her brother’s account described later is accurate, she also fangirled over George W. Bush.)
At the 2020 Republican National Convention, Harp doubled down on the “Trump saved my life” narrative, declaring to attendees, “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.” She added, “I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for you.”
But this narrative conveniently twists the timeline and the facts. As The Washington Post reported, Harp described receiving the treatment in online posts roughly two months before Trump even signed the Right to Try law on May 30, 2018. These include a March 27 tweet—nine weeks before the signing—stating, “President Trump is setting records in speeding up the drug approval process. The chemo I’m on now wasn’t approved 5 years ago” (emphasis added).
Significantly, the drug Harp described receiving was already FDA-approved; Harp says it was prescribed “off-label,” meaning for a use beyond its approval. Right to Try applies only to drugs that have not yet received FDA approval, meaning the law would not have covered her treatment.
Rising through the ranks
Trump invited Harp onto the advisory board of his 2020 campaign following that obsequious RNC speech. This led, as these things often do, to a job as an anchor at One America News Network from 2020 to 2022. There, Harp dutifully repeated his false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen. She joined Trump’s staff in 2022.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Trump’s former White House physician, told Fox News Digital in December 2024 that Harp “keeps everybody in a really good mood, and most importantly, she keeps the president in a really good mood.” White House spokesman Kush Desai told the Independent: “No president has cultivated as much loyalty among their staffers and administration officials as President Trump; this is a testament to his commitment to our country and its people. Natalie Harp is a beloved White House Official, and the Fake News Media will never understand what it’s like to be as trusted and admired as her.”
Per The New York Times, Harp works out of the Oval Office, holds a standing seat on Marine One and texts with world leaders on Trump’s behalf. (Yikes.) She holds the dual title of special assistant to the president and executive assistant to the president, and she draws a taxpayer-funded salary of $150,000. In some ways, as the Times reported, she’s filling a familiar role for Trump. During his years as a Manhattan real estate developer, female secretaries sat outside his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, ready to assist at a moment’s notice. Trump referred to them as “the girls.”
“Very unhealthy” relationship
Harp has an estranged brother, Preston Harp, who has spoken publicly about their relationship. He said he and his sister were homeschooled together by an “extremely conservative” mother and that he learned of his sister’s role with Trump through a 2023 news article rather than from her directly. Surprise!
He described Harp’s relationship with Trump as “very unhealthy,” saying, “She’s just like his fan club.”
In a separate interview, Preston Harp offered another insight: “I think that she does see Trump as a kind of father figure because he embodies the doctrine of American exceptionalism.”
In a CNN interview this Tuesday, he offered yet another notable account of his sister’s behavior. “I’d say since she was, like, 16, she’s had an obsession with, um, gosh, how do I explain this? Um, she’s written letters to other presidents, let me put it that way,” referring, he said, to George W. Bush.
In Trump, it appears she found a receptive audience.
A “human binky”
New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, authors of “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” described Harp as central to the daily operation of Trump’s White House. “She is in almost every single—I mean, really I’m not kidding—almost every single meeting,” Haberman said in a recent interview.
Speaking to Democracy Now! on Aug. 18, Haberman elaborated. “Natalie Harp is essentially a body person, for lack of a better way of putting it, but she is—I described her as something like a human binky a couple of days ago, and that really is what she is.” She added that Trump has described Harp to staff as someone who loves him “as much as his wife and children,” telling aides, “You’ll all go off and make money. You know, she’s never going to leave me.”
Swan described Harp’s role in similar terms. “She’s just totally devoted to him. In Oval Office meetings she sits on the chair at the side of the room with her laptop open.” In a July interview with Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan, Swan said the Secret Service was “alarmed” by personal letters Harp left for Trump during the 2024 campaign, expressing concern about someone “that close” to the president writing him such notes—at least one of which was left “in some of his private spaces.” Swan called the letters “letters of absolute devotion,” citing lines including “You are all that matters to me,” “I don’t ever want to let you down,” and “I want to bring you joy.” Swan said he found no evidence Trump wrote letters back to Harp.
Haberman and Swan first reported the letters nearly two years ago in a November 2024 Times article, which found their authenticity “confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of them.” In addition to the saccharine lines above, Harp reportedly thanked Trump for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life.” In another letter, she told him she wanted to get back to “that synergy” the two once had, where “we’d talk about everything and nothing,” writing that she wanted “to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work.’”
A separate letter, described in the Times’ reporting on Tuesday, apologized for an incident during a round of golf: “I also am sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland.” Harp wrote that she wanted “things to always be right between us,” adding that she had “been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).” She signed the letter, “With all my heart, Natalie.”
Haberman has also said Harp’s presence around Trump predates his current term, describing her running “on foot” behind his golf cart during the run-up to the 2024 campaign. “She became ever-present,” Haberman said. “She would join him on the golf course when he was golfing, you know, in the interregnum period even before the campaign, literally sometimes running on foot behind his golf cart.”
Yesterday, CNN reported that during a 2023 visit to a New York City courthouse, staffers told Harp there was no room for her in the motorcade.
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.
You know, normal stuff.
The human printer and shitposter
A resurfaced 2024 clip from “The Art of the Surge” also circulated this week. It showed Harp taking dictation from Trump in real time as he reacted to then-Vice President Kamala Harris’s Democratic National Convention speech. In the clip, Harp sits beside Trump with a laptop open, typing his remarks as he delivers them, before he tells her, “Get that out right away.”
The moment illustrates how Harp was one of a small number of people with access to Trump’s Truth Social account. A Wall Street Journal analysis published in May found that Harp brings Trump “stacks of printed-out draft social-media posts for his approval.” She became known as “the human printer” during the 2024 campaign, as the Times reported at the time, because she carried a portable printer to quickly get positive news to Trump.
If you’re wondering who is scouring the internet looking for wild content Trump will like, look no further than Harp. Per the Journal, Harp provided Trump with proposed posts that “often recycle content from other accounts that Harp or advisers think would appeal to Trump.” Harp then logs into the president’s account, at times outside normal work hours, to post batches of Trump-approved messages. (Trump also posts some content himself.) The Journal found the account had posted at least 8,800 times since the start of Trump’s second term, including one stretch of 55 posts between 10:14 p.m. and 1:12 a.m., and another of nearly 160 posts in under four hours on Dec. 1. It’s unclear if Trump is posting these himself, if Harp is posting them for him, or if it’s some combination of both.
And remember the Obamas-as-apes video? The Journal also reported that, earlier this year, Harp posted that video at Trump’s direction, along with an AI-generated image of Trump as a Christ-like figure. Trump later deleted both posts after bipartisan criticism. At the time, Trump told reporters he had not seen the Obama imagery before approving the post, and a White House official attributed the episode to an editing error.
This kind of “shitposting” from Trump’s account predates his second term. In May 2024, during the campaign, Trump’s Truth Social account reposted a video containing the phrase “Unified Reich.” The Trump campaign deleted the post and said in a statement that it was “reposted by a junior staffer who clearly did not see the word.” The Bulwark reported, citing unnamed sources, that the staffer was Harp, noting that Dan Scavino, the only other aide with that level of access to the account at the time, was not a “junior staffer.”
Harp has reportedly frustrated some White House officials because she typically does not share draft posts with anyone else, including the chief of staff’s office, communications aides or national security officials. She has told colleagues she works for Trump and “only listens to him.” (Even Eva Braun was only Hitler’s personal photographer, not one of his chief propagandists.)
Harp’s access to Trump’s Truth Social account has drawn further scrutiny amid a lawsuit involving preferential access to posts from Trump’s account. The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed suit against Trump over a paid early-access service to his Truth Social posts. Trump Media has offered customers early access to key, possibly market-moving posts for as much as $100,000 a month. The suit also names Harp and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino as defendants, citing their access to Trump’s account.
Catering to her wishes
Harp’s role has drawn renewed attention—as well as the jab from Ossoff—because of what some now humorously call Catergate. Harp was reportedly one of a small handful of aides who hid with Trump aboard a catering truck in order to board a separate aircraft, reportedly after U.S. intelligence flagged a possible Iranian missile attack. Other officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, were left behind on the original vulnerable aircraft. White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller was also reportedly among those left on the decoy plane (sad trombone for Peewee German).
Trump later defended the arrangement. “I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” he told reporters. “I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane I think that they would be more likely to go for.”
The reporting about Harp being on the escape catering truck was behind the Ossoff one-liner that has since produced repeated meltdowns. The day after delivering the speech, pressed by MS NOW’s Jen Psaki on why he had named Harp specifically, Ossoff did not walk back his comment.
“Well, I’ve heard this particular aide referred to as his security blanket,” he said. “And I think we could say that about any number of the senior aides in the White House. They’re not telling him what he needs to hear. They’re telling him what he wants to hear. And the nation is at war, and we cannot afford that. We need a team in the White House. We need folks at the State Department, at the Defense Department, in the United States Congress who take their jobs seriously. Those sailors out on the Lincoln, they do their jobs with excellence and dedication every single day. They didn’t sign up for luxury. They signed up to defend the country. And the president, surrounded by enablers in the West Wing, is playing golf, is trading stock, and is decorating his ballroom. It’s a disgrace.”
“Stop making insinuations,” say the people who say “Barack Hussein Obama” every chance they get.
It just underlines what a pathetic human being Donald Trump is that he needs this level of adoration every minute of every day (see his Cabinet meetings for another example). He just really doesn’t even understand the concept of why you’d want someone to tell you something you don’t want to hear.
Ahhh remember the days of Monica Lewinsky and Clinton? Republicans had a field day with that one! Democrats were maligned as a group for continuing to support him and she was scape goated with screams of harlot etc.! But now republicans have been so neutered they can’t acknowledge any wrong, or perceived wrong, from their idol. Just because this young blond ( does Trump have a type or what?) , sycophant spends every moment massaging this world sized ego and is chosen to occupy the catering cabin while the rest of his entourage can fly the targeted jet….well really! Now republicans are backtracking on all that angst about Lewinsky and are claiming “ Democrats are so wrong about this blond young woman ( child?)”
Ohh hypocrisy, thy name is American republicans.