Transcription
We're learning more about the White House aid who's garnered a lot of interest since details of her relationship with the president came to light in the new book Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Her name is Natalie Harp. Her title, a special and executive assistant to the president. He reportedly told the White House staff that she was, quote, the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids. Randy Kay has more.
Good evening. I'm Natalie Harp, a formerly forgotten American from California. Her name is Natalie Harp. She's a former host for the far-right network One American News and today, at just 34 years old, is considered one of President Donald Trump's closest personal assistants. She's just totally devoted to him. In Oval Office meetings, she sits on the chair, the side of the room, with her laptop open. Harp is known for toting around a portable printer and printing stacks of papers and positive press for President Trump on the spot. She's become known as the human printer. Trump basically just says, "Natalie, get me this." Or he's, you know, uh, "Google this."
In their new book, Regime Change, New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman also report on letters that Harp has left for Trump. Swan described them as odd, adoring, and intimate. She has written him numerous letters, um, that she's left for him, including one that says, "You are all that matters to me," or some, some version of that, raised the eyebrows of the Secret Service during the campaign. Some of these med letters that were left, um, in some of his private quarters. According to Regime Change, Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wilds, asked, "Where am I?" upon learning about the letters.
HARP first connected with Trump during her battle with stage 2 bone cancer, thanking Trump publicly for saving her life by signing the Right to Try Act in 2019. She claims that allowed her to receive experimental cancer treatment. Say, "I'm not dying from cancer anymore. Thanks to President Trump, I'm living with cancer." She shared her story and credited Trump again at the 2020 Republican National Convention. "Because I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for you. 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." The Washington Post has raised questions about her claims.
In Regime Change, the authors report that HARP stays late into the night at the White House when President Trump is often active on social media. Natalie Harp is one of the people who took over posting duties, uh, to the president's Truth Social post, uh, in this term, and that makes her fairly significant. In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that HARP has frustrated some White House officials because she typically doesn't share draft posts with the chief of staff's office, communications aids, or national security officials. The paper also reported that HARP has told others she works for Trump and only listens to him.
Soon after Trump began his second term, according to the authors of Regime Change, Trump told staffers that Harp was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids. "All of you will go off and make money," Trump said. "She'll never leave me." One of his closest aids, Natalie Harp. Maggie and Jonathan report on how she became the president's gateway to information, supplying him with positive news stories and pro-Trump social media posts. They also write how she would often read the materials out loud to the president and later give him physical copies from a portable printer that she kept on her.
According to the new book, HARP, quote, wrote Trump adoring letters that she left in his personal spaces, including one that read, "You are all that matters to me." Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wilds, told others that she remembered thinking, "Where am I?" and that Trump had taken to telling his staff that Natalie was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and his kids, adding, "All of you will go off and make money and she'll never leave me."
I mean, Maggie, obviously those of us who cover the president know Natalie Harp. Obviously, she's typically by his side all the time. For people at home, though, um, and as you're looking at the realm of figures that are surrounding him in this second term, um, what does this say to you? So, a couple of things, uh, Caitlyn. Natalie Harp became omnipresent in the campaign, and we write about that. Uh, she was not one of the original people in 2021 and this very small group of people, uh, who was there. But, you know, at some point in 2022, she became, uh, somebody who was constantly with him on the golf courses when he was in Florida again. With a, she, they would refer to her as the human printer because she had this portable printer where she would hand him pieces of, of positive information. What it says is that he wants to keep people around who either, you know, make him happy or, or feed him information that he prefers to hear. I mean, one of the, one of the scenes that we have in the book, uh, is him demanding the, quote unquote, real numbers, uh, during a, a, a tariff discussion, uh, when he is being told by his own staff what the actual numbers are, and he wants Natalie to go get him some different set of numbers that just didn't, didn't comport with reality. And he is more interested in information that he wants to hear and in seeking out something that validates what he believes, uh, you know. That he, he has always been interested in that. It was just harder for him to get. This time it is much easier, and, and Natalie Harp is one of the people who took over posting duties, uh, to the president's Truth Social post, uh, in this term, and that makes her fairly significant.
Yeah. I mean, Maggie, that part really stood out to me because basically, you know, he was talking to the, h, the Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary. I mean, this passage of the book talks about what he's hearing from all of these staffers, and he's telling Natalie, go find the good numbers that, that she had pulled up for him. I mean, it kind of takes you into how he, uh, equates his staff in terms of experience and, and whether they're in the cabinet or the staffer who follows him around.
No, that's right. I mean, one of the things we used to hear in, ter, in term one a lot, Caitlyn, and, and in this way, you know, this is a sort of more of a pure Trump, uh, aspect, and we describe, uh, Steve Bannon referring to, uh, Donald Trump that way and how much pure Trump was coming through. You know, he, he often would assign multiple people, uh, the same job, uh, and but not quite like this. Uh, he really is just bringing in, you know, sort of direct people who will do what he wants. You're seeing that with Bill Py, uh, who is now the director of national intelligence despite having no intelligence experience, no intelligence community experience. We have a, a lot of, uh, detail about Bill Py's efforts to try to push Trump, uh, toward evidence that he believed could help, uh, lead to prosecutions of Trump's perceived enemies in the book. The fact that he is now the director of national intelligence, I think, speaks to exactly what we're talking about, uh, with Natalie Harp in a different context.
I think most people, if you were, if you had an employee, because that's what she is, leaving you letters in your personal space telling you that you are the most important thing in your life, you would say, you know what, hun, I think you need to take a vacation, um, but he instead finds this to be incredibly affirming, and that says more about him than it does about her.
Right. Right. Yeah. I think that's an interesting point about it, though. It's on brand that, that, that he, that he would expect this and, and demand this. Yeah, it's on brand. And I think it's, it's even more troubling because it shows that he's surrounding himself with people who adore him. There are no contric conflicting ideas. There's no one challenging him. So if he wants to do something like bomb Iran, or he wants to do something like use a nuke, or he wants to do something like take out Venezuela, there's not a single voice around him that can offer any kind of contrast or challenge, all the way down to his assistant. Everyone is in this circle of sickopants, which is very, very dangerous, and it's, you see that more in this administration, his, this second administration that he's in, than the first, right? The loyalty around him, it's just insane. Look, I have been part of two administrations. I have never seen a role like this. It is unusual to have someone basically be a human printer and only put in front of you stories that you like, make sure you keep all the bad stuff away from him. It is so a disadvantage to the American people because it is important for the president to hear both sides, the good stuff and the bad stuff. It is, it is insane, and I have never seen anything like this. But again, it plays to what Trump likes: pure complete loyalty. And you see that more around him this time around, certainly than you did in the first.