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What to Know About Trump’s Aide Natalie Harp

19 August 2026 at 23:02
President Donald Trump and aide Natalie Harp (R) exit Marine One on the Ellipse near the White House on Aug. 16, 2026. —Mandel Ngan—AFP/Getty Images

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.

Harp said that Trump saved her life

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.

She used to work for a far-right news channel

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.

Her official title is ‘special assistant to the President and executive assistant to the President’

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.”

She was one of the select number of people who was on Trump’s secret flight out of Turkey

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.”

CNN Condemns Trump's Attacks on Journalist Kristen Holmes Following Heated Oval Office Response

The nature of her relationship with Trump has been a subject of scrutiny

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.”

CNN Condemns the White House’s Attacks on Journalist Kristen Holmes: Here’s What to Know

19 August 2026 at 01:12

CNN condemned the White House for launching personal attacks on one of the network’s journalists.

“Kristen Holmes is one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House,” CNN said of its senior White House correspondent in a statement shared on X on Monday. “This afternoon, she did her job and asked the President of the United States a tough, relevant, and newsworthy question on behalf of the American people.”

“Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with, but personal attacks on journalists for asking questions are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of a free press,” CNN continued. “We stand firmly behind Kristen and reject these attacks in the strongest possible terms.”

The network’s rebuke came after a question that Holmes asked President Donald Trump during an Oval Office event on Monday drew a heated response from Trump and, later, a series of critical posts from the White House targeting the journalist.

“Jon Ossoff said that you’d rather travel with your aide Natalie Harp and build the ballroom than do your job as President,” Holmes asked the President, referring to a comment the Democratic Georgia Senator made during a speech the day before. “What is your response?”

“You mean Pee-wee Herman? Pee-wee Herman lookalike?” Trump replied. “No, I would much rather do other things. We’re building a great facility here. We’re fixing a White House that hasn’t been taken care of.”

The event in the Oval Office celebrated a teenage lifeguard who rescued a 10-year-old boy at a beach in Santa Cruz, California, in July. But it is common practice for journalists present at events like this to ask the President questions about a variety of issues.

Later on during the event, Holmes tried to ask the President another question, this time about whether North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un had asked him to “scale back” American military exercises with South Korea. Trump didn’t answer her, instead telling her “quiet.”

“You’re very disrespectful,” Trump said to Holmes. “Quiet.”

He then asked Holmes which news outlet she was with, to which she replied that she was with CNN.

“Fake news,” he shot back. “You’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re fake news.”

As Holmes tried to ask her question again, Trump repeatedly said: “Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet.”

“You’re a fake reporter and you report fake news,” he said to Holmes.

Tensions further rose after the official White House Rapid Response account on X shared a clip of Holmes asking Trump about Ossoff’s remarks and called Holmes “a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession.”

“@POTUS hosts a hero lifeguard in the Oval Office and she uses it as an opportunity to take a cheap shot about one of President Trump’s staffers,” the White House continued. “These scumbags are the lowest of the low.”

Less than an hour later, the account made another post attacking Holmes.

“Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question,” the White House said, tagging Holmes in the post. “They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”

In addition to CNN’s official statement, many of Holmes’ colleagues fired back at the White House for its remarks. 

“What a horrible … thing to say. Kristen is an incredible reporter, person and, above all, mother,” Alayna Treene, a White House correspondent at CNN, said in a post on X. “I don’t understand such a reaction to a journalist asking the president for his response to something a Democratic senator has leveled against him.”

“Kristen is an excellent reporter who asked a good question, to which the president gave a fulsome answer,” Betsy Klein, a senior reporter and writer covering the White House for CNN, said in a social media post. “You know what’s disgusting and inhumane? Bringing her perfect children into this.”

Trump has repeatedly targeted news outlets and individual journalists throughout his political career. He has attacked female journalists in particular on a number of occasions; in November, for instance, he told one female reporter “quiet, piggy” after she asked him a question and, on a separate occasion later that month, called another “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”

The President propagated the term “Fake News” to denigrate the press, and members of his Administrations have continued to use the phrase in the years since. The White House has also created what it calls a “Media Bias Portal,” which lists journalists, news outlets, and articles that it claims are biased against the President. Several CNN stories, including some by Holmes, are listed on the site.

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