President Donald Trump has brought his close aide, Natalie Harp, on stage at a rally in Nebraska to sign an executive order in a desperate attempt to reduce diesel costs ahead of the crucial midterm elections.
In Grand Island Monday night, Trump asked Harp — known as the “Human Printer” for giving the president physical copies of social media posts and news clippings while on the go — to bring him the executive order that will allow anyone to purchase tax-free red-dyed diesel.
Harp walked on stage and handed Trump the executive order, which he signed in front of his supporters. When he was done, he threw his pen into the crowd as they chanted, “Trump, Trump, Trump.”
He then handed the executive order back to Harp and said, “She reminds me of The Price Is Right,” referring to the game show where an announcer asks contestants to “come on down” to the stage.
“This perfect person comes up, hands it, walks off,” Trump said, seemingly comparing Harp to a model who shows off the prizes on The Price Is Right. “We should go on television with this show. Right?”
Harp’s unusually personal relationship with the president has drawn scrutiny in recent weeks after The Washington Post reported that she was one of the select few who got to ride with Trump during a secret escape from Air Force One while they were leaving the NATO summit in Turkey amid a potential assassination threat from Iran.
Marc Beckman, senior advisor to Melania Trump, dismissed any rumors that her husband’s relationship with Harp was inappropriate, telling conservative media personality Stella Escobedo on her YouTube show earlier this month that the “liberal media” was “attacking this hardworking, very talented, very intelligent person in Natalie Harp.”
Trump announced the new executive order in Nebraska, where farmers and ranchers have been hit hard by record diesel prices. Red-dyed diesel is commonly used in farming, construction and other industries.
Trump will also urge states to increase the availability of dyed diesel and order the Treasury Department to review federal diesel taxes, according to Politico. The new executive order comes as new polls show Democratic gubernatorial candidates surging in four traditional Republican strongholds.
The White House didn't immediately respond to an inquiry from The Independent.
Trump's announcement came after he said Friday that he wouldn't impose a diesel export ban because the U.S. and other leading industrialized nations, known as the Group of Seven, had agreed to release stockpiled diesel.
"Europe has a lot of diesel, and they’re going to be making a major world contribution, and so are we," Trump said.
Monday's national average price for diesel was $6.32 a gallon, down from the record high of $6.53 on September 22, according to AAA.
Trump appeared Monday at the Nebraska State Fair with Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, who faces Democratic Party-backed independent challenger Dan Osborn.
Two recent polls showed the candidates jockeying for the lead in a state that Trump won by more than 20 percentage points in 2024.
Other polls show Democratic candidates ahead of Republicans running for governor in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas, even though none of those ruby-red states has been led by a Democrat in at least two decades.
And the Silver Bulletin polling-analysis website said Monday that the Democratic edge in the so-called generic congressional ballot had risen to 8.9 percentage points, marking a new high for this year’s election cycle, and that with adjustment for likely voters, that lead increases to 9.6 percentage points.
Patrick De Haan, chief petroleum analyst for the GasBuddy price-tracking website, said on social media last week that expanding access to red-dyed diesel could save some drivers about 60 cents a gallon, but noted that “farmers already use dyed diesel and are still paying record prices.”
“Taxes aren't the problem, supply is,” De Haan wrote.
The global availability of diesel has been pinched by Trump's war against Iran, now in its eighth month, as well as Ukraine's targeting of Russian refineries as it continues to battle the full-scale invasion that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022.
Shuting Pomerleau, director of energy and environmental policy at the center-right American Action Forum think tank, responded to Haan's post by saying, "There are no effective ways to quickly bring down the diesel prices."
"It's like using a bucket to empty a river," she added.
As of Friday, 10 states that account for about one-third of all diesel sales in the U.S. had already taken steps to increase the availability of dyed diesel, Politico said, citing analysis by the independent ClearView Energy Partners research company.
Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst for Dow Jones Energy, told Politico that suspending fuel taxes could provide short-term relief with long-term consequences.
“When you’re not collecting taxes, you’re just kicking the can down the road, because you have to fix roads and stuff like that,” Cinquegrana said.
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