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A previously little-known White House aide has garnered growing public attention in recent days after Sen. Jon Ossoff mentioned her while levying an attack on President Donald Trump.
The Georgia Democrat said that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job” of President. Instead, Ossoff continued, “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.”
Ossoff was referring to 35-year-old Natalie Harp, a longtime aide to Trump. When asked about Ossoff’s comments, Trump likened the Democrat to “Pee-wee Herman” and said he “would much rather do other things.”
Read More: CNN Condemns the White House’s Attacks on Journalist Kristen Holmes: Here’s What to Know
Ossoff has stood by his remark about Trump and Harp. Appearing on MS NOW this week, the Georgia Senator said: “It’s been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week.”
So who is Harp, and what is her role in the White House? Here’s what to know.
In 2019, Harp went on Fox News and thanked Trump for signing the Right to Try law the year before. She told the network that she had stage 2 bone cancer, and that the new law allowed her to access experimental treatments, which she said saved her life.
After hearing her recount her experience, Trump asked her to give a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, according to the New York Times.
“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” she said at the event. “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.”
But after the convention, the Washington Post reported that medical experts cast doubt on Harp’s claims. Harp has said that she was treated with “an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use,” and experts said that the federal legislation that Trump signed in 2018 wouldn’t have made that drug accessible to Harp because the medication had already been approved.
About two years after her speech at the Republican National Convention, she became a member of Trump’s staff.
Before Harp joined Trump’s team, she worked as an anchor for a far-right news channel called One America News Network for a couple years. While working for the network, she propagated Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.
In Harp’s role, officially called the “special assistant to the President and executive assistant to the President,” she works closely with Trump. Many of the Truth Social posts that the President shares are ones that he dictated to her to type and hit “post” on.
According to the Times, which cited two people who were aware of the situation, Harp hit the “send” button on the enraged messages that Trump sent to the billionaire and major Republican donor Miriam Adelson in 2024—messages that nearly lost him Adelson’s backing.
Harp was also the one who transcribed dozens of social media posts that Trump dictated to her one day in which he attacked the writer E. Jean Carroll, who alleged that Trump raped her in the 1990s, the Times reported.
Some of Harp’s colleagues have dubbed her the “human printer” because she is known for carrying a portable printer as she trails Trump around so she can give him whatever information he wants or needs in print copies.
When appearing on MS NOW this week, Ossoff accused Harp of “printing out Donald Trump’s daily dose of delusion and flattery.”
When Trump left Turkey in July on a secret, alternate plane after receiving an Iranian assassination threat, only a few people working in the White House were on his flight, including Harp, CBS News reported. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was also on the plane with Trump and Harp, as were a couple other aides. Other higher-up members of his Administration, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, were on the other plane—the one that the Administration had said that Trump would travel on, and that members of the White House press corps were on.
Read More: Why Trump’s Secret Flight Was Extraordinary by Presidential Standards
When asked by the Times about Harp’s role in the White House and why she was selected to be among the few staffers on the secret flight, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump’s team.”
According to the Times, Harp wrote Trump several letters in 2023 that concerned some people near him. In the letters, which reporters at the Times viewed, Harp wrote messages including: “You are all that matters to me” and “I don’t ever want to let you down.” She called Trump her “Guardian and Protector in this Life,” and thanked him, the outlet reported.
“I want to bring you joy,” she wrote in one of the letters, according to the Times, “to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work.’”
The news outlet also reported, citing two sources with knowledge of the remark, that Trump said at one point in 2023 that Harp was the only person on his team who cared about him.
Harp’s estranged brother, Preston Harp, was asked about the Times’ reporting about the 2023 letters when he appeared on CNN this week. He replied: “I’d say since she was like 16, she’s had an obsession with, gosh, how do I explain this? She’s written letters to other Presidents. Let me put it that way. And so like, her dream came true finally.” When asked which Presidents she wrote letters to, he said: “I didn’t see the letter, but George Bush obviously, during the Iraq war.”
He also described his sister’s relationship with Trump as an “infatuation” but said, “I don’t think it’s a physical attraction.”
“I think that Trump’s best friends are people who are his fan club,” he said. “And so she’s his biggest fan. And so that’s probably why he likes her. And she’s good looking. She’s got a good personality. I don’t know.”
“I mean she thinks that he saved her life, so, like, somebody living with that kind of gratitude—that must feel pretty good,” he continued.
Harp has not publicly spoken about her relationship with Trump in the wake of Ossoff’s comments, but other White House aides and Republicans have jumped to her defense.
In a statement to TIME, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle called Ossoff’s comments “cringeworthy” and criticized the Senator’s voting record, in addition to defending Harp.
“Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest working aides on President Trump’s team,” Ingle said in the statement.
Eric Trump, one of the President’s sons, slammed CNN’s interview with Preston Harp on Wednesday.
“What absolute trash,” he said in a post on X. “Natalie is an incredible young woman — a cancer survivor, a genuinely good person, and arguably one of the hardest-working people in the White House. She’s deeply committed to my father, to her job, and to this country.”
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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced Tuesday that “all trade, commercial exchanges, and financial transactions with Iran have been halted until further notice,” alleging that Iran had fired two ballistic missiles toward it.
The country’s foreign ministry said the decision comes “in light of regional escalations that undermine regional and international peace and security.”
Earlier Tuesday, the UAE’s Ministry of Defense reported that two missiles launched from Iran toward the country, both of which fell into the sea. The statement said it “affirms its readiness to respond to any threats and to resolutely counter any attempts to undermine the security of the country or the safety of maritime navigation in the region.”
Read More: Trump Again Threatens to Bomb Oman
Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, rejected the Emirati claim on Tuesday, saying that it “undermines ongoing efforts to strengthen trust between countries in the region and prevent the escalation of insecurity,” according to the semi-official Fars news agency.
“The impact on the Iranian economy could be significant,” Simon Henderson, director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at the Washington Institute, tells TIME. “The UAE is one of the top non-oil trading partners with Iran.”
As of April, the UAE accounts for 12.5% of Iran’s exports and 30.43% of its imports, according to Iranian news agency WANA.
Iran’s dollar currently ranks as the least valuable currency in the world, and its government told a Russian news agency in April that the war has already cost it some $270 billion in direct and indirect damages.
Stability in the region is fragile, as a number of incidents have been recently reported in the Strait of Hormuz. On Tuesday, a vessel reported that it had been struck by an unknown projectile, causing damage to the engine room and a crew casualty, according to the U.K. Trade Maritime Operations Centre (UKMTO). Last Thursday, a separate vessel was struck by a drone.
The UAE has previously reported the detection of missiles coming toward it, most recently on July 12, when it confirmed that a missile fell outside of its borders.
In May, the defense ministry reported that it had intercepted six unmanned aerial vehicles within 48 hours that “attempted to target civilian and vital areas in the country.”
One drone, launched from the direction of the UAE’s western border, struck an electricity generator near the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant on May 17. Its origin has not been confirmed and is under investigation.
During the first few weeks of the conflict, Iran launched a series of more aggressive strikes on targets in the UAE, hitting military, energy, and civilian infrastructure. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) vowed at the time to “punish aggressors throughout the region,” pointing toward U.S. military assets stationed in the country, as well as other Gulf states.
Tehran resumed targeting U.S. allies in the Middle East, including Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain during the return to hostilities in early July, when negotiations based upon a Memorandum of Understanding collapsed.
Peace talks between the United States and Iran have made little progress in recent weeks.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that “there are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled,” between the U.S. and Iran. He also reaffirmed that the naval blockade on Iranian ports and vessels remains in place, amid ongoing claims that the Strait of Hormuz is “open and operating.”
Marine traffic data suggested Wednesday that some ships were indeed passing through the Strait, but still at significantly lower levels than before the conflict began.
Earlier this week, the President also threatened to “bomb the s---” of Oman, a U.S. ally and mediator between Washington and Tehran, should it “get in the way” of U.S. attempts to gain effective international control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Oman and Iran have reportedly been working toward an agreement to manage traffic through the Strait, which carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply.
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The U.K. government has indicated its willingness to reconsider its digital services tax amid increasing pressure from the Trump Administration.
The concession came in response to an interview published Monday in which U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told The Times that President Donald Trump’s threats to scrap a trade deal with Britain and impose a 100% tariff were “not a bluff.”
When asked if the interview might lead Downing Street to change its stance on the tax, a government spokesperson told TIME, “We remain open to discussing U.S. concerns and working with partners internationally.”
The digital services tax imposes a 2% levy on the revenues of “search engines, social media services, and online marketplaces which derive value from U.K. users.” Several other European countries, including Portugal, Spain, and Poland, have also implemented similar taxes.
Greer said Britain was using American companies as “piggy banks” and that he was “not going to tolerate that.”
“We have very good relations with the U.K. We’ve had very constructive relationships, we’d love to keep talking to them about this issue. The President is quite serious about digital services taxes all over the world,” he said.
Read More: Why Trump Is Threatening to Impose a ‘Big Tariff’ on the U.K.
“This tax is about making sure that businesses pay their fair share of U.K. tax based on the value they derive from U.K. activities. It is an interim measure, and we are still committed to removing it once a global solution is in place,” the spokesperson said, adding that both countries “share a strong trading relationship.”
A White House official tells TIME that “the Administration continues to address digital services taxes and other tech issues with our trading partners.”
The U.K. and the U.S. agreed to a “groundbreaking” Tech Prosperity Deal in September 2025, which was expected to bring billions of dollars in investment from U.S. tech companies into the U.K. technology sector.
However, relations between the two countries have splintered since the onset of the Iran war.
"This is not Winston Churchill we're dealing with," Trump said of former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the height of tensions in March, as he accused the former U.K. leader of "ruining" relations.
Trump later warned the U.K. that he would implement a “big tariff” in April if the country did not drop its digital services tax on U.S. tech companies. And in June, he threatened to impose a 100% tariff on imports from any country that taxes digital services provided by U.S. companies.
“This tariff will supersede trade deals made with the country, whether implemented, signed, or not,” Trump said June 26.
The Trump Administration has not yet made any official tariff announcements linked to these threats.
However, the U.K. government, which has recently come under new leadership, has signaled that it is open to discussions.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office in July, has indicated intentions to mend the relationship between the two countries.
Asked whether there was a deadline for discussions with the new Burnham government, Greer declined to set one, instead emphasizing cooperation with the U.K.
“I don’t set artificial timelines. All I know is the President is eager to enforce our trade policy, he’s eager to make sure our companies aren’t discriminated against,” he said.
Since taking office, Burnham has appeared keen to repair relations with Trump. The two have spoken by phone, and Burnham extended an invitation for Trump to visit Manchester in the future—where the 2027 G20 summit is rumored to be taking place and where Burnham served as mayor before becoming Prime Minister.
But he may be hesitant to remove an important source of revenue for the U.K.
Between 2021 and 2025, the tax generated more than £2.4 billion ($3.2 billion) in revenue for the British government.
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Trump has pushed the U.K. on policy in the past, including his consistent calls for Britain to allow new North Sea oil and gas licenses—something the Starmer government intended to ban.
On the eve of Burnham’s entry to Downing Street, Trump claimed: “The people of Aberdeen, in Scotland, are dancing in the streets because the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has stated that he will be opening up, all the way, the invaluable North Sea Oil."
Burnham has signaled that he is open to reconsidering Britain’s access to North Sea oil and gas.
“I’ve got something of an open mind, you know. I don’t have a sort of fixed position,” he said in early June.
Trump has continued to tout the new British Prime Minister’s willingness to reconsider the issue.
“One of the things he is going to do, I think he's going to open up the North Sea. That'll make the U.K. pretty rich,” Trump said on Monday in the Oval Office.
Burnham, however, has yet to make a final decision.
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