Natalie Harp, Donald Trump’s aide whose devotion to the president is under intense scrutiny, is “not beloved” by many of her White House colleagues, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
Harp, Trump’s executive assistant, has become the subject of media reports in recent weeks after it emerged that she was one of the few selected to join the president when he was covertly whisked out of Turkey on a military aircraft last month following threats of a potential attack from Iran.
Reports detailing Harp’s alleged behavior around Trump, 80, have been leaking out of the West Wing this week, with The New York Times reporting that some staffers are “unnerved” by the 35-year-old.
Haberman, who has reported extensively on Harp’s proximity to the president, was asked Wednesday by CNN’s Erin Burnett what other White House staffers “think about her role.”
“She is not beloved by a lot of her colleagues,” Haberman said.
The 35-year-old aide has been reported to write adoring notes for Trump, helps him draft social media posts for Truth Social, and has been described as “a gatekeeper” to the president.
“She does sometimes work through the process. There are people who will say that she, more regularly than she used to, will update colleagues on what she's doing,” Haberman said. “But there has been a lot of controversy around Harp's role for a while, and what it ends up being reduced to in the descriptions of some people is, essentially, a food fight.”
The scrutiny of Harp’s role and proximity to Trump is warranted because “this is a White House, not a campaign,” Haberman said. “This is going to raise different questions about who is around the president, who is working [on a] taxpayer salary.”
The White House has defended Harp in response to questions about her role. “Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump’s team,” outgoing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement this week.
Laura Loomer, a conservative activist and close Trump ally, alleged that White House staffers are jealous of Harp and are leaking stories about her.
“Make no mistake, the nasty stories you’re seeing about Natalie Harp that are being posted are coming from inside the West Wing,” Loomer wrote on X on Wednesday. “A lot of the people who work for President Trump suffer from major professional jealousy and they are very bothered by loyalty.”
Haberman’s book, which she wrote with her NYT colleague Jonathan Swan, reported that Harp would leave Trump notes, including one that read: “You are all that matters to me.” The authors said they interviewed numerous Washington insiders for the book.
Another letter from Harp to Trump was also obtained by the Times in which she gushed about wanting “things to always be right between us.” Harp reportedly wrote to Trump that she had been “forgetting to eat” and “even forgetting to sleep” as she gushed to him about a trip to Scotland in 2023.
The outlet also obtained video footage that showed Harp “sprinting across great distances to keep up with Mr. Trump’s golf cart as it putters across his course in Scotland.”
“I also am sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland,” Harp reportedly wrote in the letter. She signed off the letter by writing, “With all my heart, Natalie,” according to the newspaper.
Haberman previously said that Harp wields incredible power as a “conduit for information” to the president. “She is in almost every single — I mean, really I’m not kidding — almost every single meeting,” Haberman told MS NOW.
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