The Natalie Harp story is not minor. She has the ear and apparently the constant attention of the president. She is reportedly behind many of his more inflammatory social media posts.
Who is Natalie Harp, one of Trump’s closest aides?
Here’a a look at Natalie Harp, President Donald Trump’s executive assistant.
By now you’ve likely heard of Natalie Harp, President Donald Trump’s executive assistant and personal ego-inflater, a 35-year-old loyalist who appears ever by the president’s side.
She went from background character in the Trump administration to a national focal point in a blink after Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff spoke this line criticizing the president’s preoccupations and the luxury jet he was “gifted” by a foreign country: “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”
Questions swirled, and suddenly, Harp was everywhere. America learned how she carries a portable printer so she can show the president printouts of people saying nice things about him. We heard about the time she rode in the trunk of an SUV to stay close to Trump.
The weird story of Natalie Harp put Republicans on their heels
The coast-to-coast cringe that the Harp story caused shows exactly why Ossoff was smart to drop her name into his criticism of Trump: It’s a very weird story, one that highlights the weirdness endemic to this administration. It also triggered Republicans and right-wing pundits everywhere, setting a trap for them to turn what could’ve been an unnoticed story into hundreds upon hundreds of stories.
One of the Republican Party’s dark arts is taking something minor, like President Barack Obama wearing a tan suit, freaking out about it, setting up predictable Democrats to overreact to the inanity of the attack, then sitting back with wealthy donors who want more tax cuts and laughing at how easily they hijacked the news cycle.
Well, Ossoff stole their bit, with one important caveat: The Harp story isn’t minor. She has the ear and apparently the constant attention of the president. She is reportedly behind many of his more inflammatory social media posts, and she dictates his words and sends them out on Truth Social. That puts her on the front line of information that can move markets and impact global relationships.
As MS NOW reported, Harp went more than a year without getting a security clearance required for all White House staffers.
That seems strange.
Sen. Jon Ossoff gave Democrats a blueprint for attacking Trump and Co.
So Trump and Republicans can shout all they want about Harp being some innocent bystander and, without a hint of self-awareness about the president’s decades of insulting women, holler “SEXISM!” until their faces turn MAGA red. But thanks to Ossoff’s one-off comment, Americans now know Harp is a key person in the orbit of the most powerful political figure in the world, and she deserves to be scrutinized.
The whole thing is weird.
The fact that Trump, while Americans are struggling to buy groceries and gas is north of $4 a gallon, can’t shut up for a moment about a ballroom or new gold-plated statues or a new helipad at the White House – that’s weird.
An RFK Jr. cooking show? Weird might be putting it lightly.
The fact that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, is deeply involved with his work at the Pentagon, something the secretary’s former chief spokesman called “bonkers” – that’s weird.
The fact that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is hosting a derpy online cooking show while Americans wrestle with measles and a stream of dangerous food recalls from a government agency Kennedy gutted – weird!
Americans should know how strange the Trump administration is
This is all bizarro-world stuff that people who pay attention to the administration see every day. The problem has been that most Americans don’t have their faces in the firehose of political news, so much of the damaging and worrisome weirdness goes unnoticed.
That’s why Ossoff’s comment mattered. It dragged a spotlight onto one freaky, worrisome element of Trump’s White House. The way people on the right melted down over that comment shows it hit a nerve.
Americans are plenty frustrated with the Trump administration, and that’s reflected in his dismal poll numbers. But the fact that the frustration is being created by a bunch of bubble-dwelling, right-wing goobers with curious attachment issues and decidedly not-normal behavior should be fully exposed as well.
Democrats would be wise to follow Ossoff’s lead and not sidestep the fact that the Trump administration and the Republican Party aren’t just incompetent. It’s also deeply, profoundly weird.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.