Lurking in the background of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s exposé on President Donald Trump’s second administration is a singular blond aide, more devoted than all the other aides: Natalie Harp.
A former right-wing cable news host, the 30-something Harp has been following the president around with a portable printer and words of adoration for several years. New reporting in “Regime Change” adds to the picture of piety Harp has embodied through her service to the 47th president, whom she once reportedly credited with saving her life by way of 2018’s “Right to Try” legislation, giving her access to experimental cancer treatments.
In the book, Haberman and Swan expand on their reporting on Harp from the aftermath of the 2024 election.
She is constantly at the ready with a laptop, which she uses to search for information demanded by the president — or rather, proof of the president’s own preexisting convictions.
Last year, for example, Harp was party to a meeting between Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whom the president accused of failing to give him the “real numbers” on tariffs that India and China imposed on the United States. Lutnick pushed back, assuring the president the data had come from accurate government sources.
“Natalie, give me the real numbers. Do your Google, do your computer thing, and get me the real numbers,” Trump reportedly said.
Trump had taken to telling his staff that Natalie (or “Nathalie,” as he would call her, using a French pronunciation) was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids. “All of you will go off and make money,” he would say. “She’ll never leave me.”
The authors noted that “Harp, despite her best efforts, was not finding the numbers that didn’t exist.”
Harp’s dedication reportedly alarmed even Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff who also helped shepherd him through the 2024 campaign season.
Trump reportedly kept letters by Harp that contained such eyebrow-raising missives as, “You are all that matters to me.”
“I don’t ever want to let you down,” read another letter, per Haberman and Swan. Another said that she wanted to be able to talk to Trump about “everything and nothing.”
The situation reportedly left Wiles asking herself, “Where am I?”
Harp apparently earned the nickname “the human printer” for herself due to the supplies she keeps on hand, given Trump’s preference for reading a printed page. Harp keeps the president supplied with positive headlines and social media posts, which could leave him with a distorted view of reality.
At one point, Trump’s “main inputs,” the authors wrote, were “Fox News, which was far more pro-Israel than the MAGA conversation on social media, and whatever snippets of information Natalie Harp printed out and brought him.”
It is Harp who typically holds the phone that Trump uses to post to Truth Social, often reportedly typing out the posts herself.
It was Harp who showed Trump video of the death of Charlie Kirk in September, as the right-wing pundit hosted a campus debate.
It was also Harp who ensured that Haberman and Swan had copies of an essay written by a golf caddy that extolled Trump’s power.
Trump had reportedly described the man as a historian — but it turned out to be golfer Gary Player’s caddy, who said he likes reading about history. The document compared Trump favorably to some of history’s most brutal leaders, including Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Attila the Hun, Napoleon and Genghis Khan. Trump brought it up when asked about the power he wields in his second term.
And Harp seems to be one of the driving forces of encouragement for Trump’s redecoration and renovation spree.
One morning, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt entered the Oval Office to find Donald Trump clutching a tube of superglue and attempting to affix gold decorations to the marble fireplace mantel. As he was known to prefer his own aesthetic handiwork to anyone else’s, the sight of the President squeezing glue onto gilded appliques and mounting them on the wall himself surprised no one in his inner circle. … When Trump asked White House residence staff what they thought of the glittering display, most responses were muted, but his devout aide Natalie Harp would gush with delight.
According to another Trump tell-all, Harp’s relationship with the president even managed to make the Secret Service squirm.
Michael Wolff wrote in last year’s “All Or Nothing” that Harp was considered “a potential danger to herself as well as to the president,” but that no one wanted to be the one to have that uncomfortable conversation with him.
