Natalie Harp would run “on foot” behind Donald Trump’s golf cart during days spent on the links before his re-election. Now, the 34-year-old wields an astonishing degree of influence as an omnipresent White House staffer, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
Haberman made the remarks during a Saturday interview on MS NOW, where she discussed her newly published book, Regime Change, a scoop-heavy account of Trump’s return to power based on thousands of interviews with numerous unnamed sources.
The veteran journalist revealed that Harp — a former television presenter turned executive assistant to the president— attends “almost every single meeting” in the White House. She also helps funnel information to Trump outside of formal channels and displays a level of devotion that once alarmed the Secret Service.
“Natalie Harp is a beloved White House Official, and the Fake News Media will never understand what it’s like to be as trusted and admired as her,” a White House spokesperson previously told The Independent.
Haberman’s book, coauthored with fellow Times reporter Jonathan Swan, is packed with details about Trump’s second term, spanning the administration’s handling of the Epstein files to the president’s interior decorating habits.
Regime Change, which has sold more than 300,000 copies, has repeatedly drawn Trump’s ire since it was published last month. In a Saturday post on Truth Social, he dismissed “90% of it” as “Fake News,” deriding Haberman as a “loser” and branding Swan “her flunky associate.”
During her MS NOW appearance, Haberman recounted Harp’s early days with Trump after he left Washington and decamped to Florida.
“She became ever-present,” Haberman said. “She would join him on the golf course when he was golfing, you know, in the interregnum period even before the campaign, literally sometimes running on foot behind his golf cart.”
The former One America News Network host had been on the president’s radar since 2019, when her cancer survival story caught his attention. She joined his staff in 2022.
Around the time of the 2024 campaign, she picked up the nickname “the human printer” because she carried a “battery-charged portable printer” to furnish Trump with “a healthy supply of positive news.”
But Haberman said she also became a concern on the campaign trail. She left Trump “very personal notes in his private spaces,” including one that read, “You are all that matters to me.” The Secret Service, in the reporter’s telling, was “concerned” by this.
Trump, however, seems to greatly appreciate her loyalty. “He will say to advisors, you know, ‘you’ll all go off and make money…She’ll never leave me,’” Haberman said.
Last month, Harp’s estranged older brother described her close relationship with the president as “very unhealthy.”
Following Trump’s inauguration last January, Harp, who holds an MBA from Liberty University, emerged as one of the most influential staffers in the White House.
“She is in almost every single — I mean, really I’m not kidding — almost every single meeting,” Haberman told MS NOW, adding that Harp is usually seated against the Oval Office wall with her laptop.
In recent months, she’s also been spotted on the links alongside Trump, including in late June, when the president visited a course outside of Washington, D.C. with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
Harp’s main job is to serve as a “conduit for information.” At times, that means retrieving documents; at others, it means helping outsiders get through to the GOP president.
“She is a way for people to bypass the official chain,” Haberman said. “She is a way to get, you know, texts to him that people want to have him see. And that is its own level of power.”
Harp, whose name Trump pronounces in the French fashion, according to the book, is also among the people with access to the president’s Truth Social account.
She’s helped shape some of Trump’s most controversial posts, all of which the president approves, The Wall Street Journal reported in May.
This year, at Harp’s urging, Trump posted a video that depicted the Obamas as apes and an image casting him as a Christ-like figure. Following bipartisan condemnation, both posts were later deleted.
“No President has used social media as effectively as President Trump, who has formed a direct line of communication to the American people,” a White House spokesperson previously told The Independent. “The Fake News Media hates being cut out, but the American people appreciate directly hearing from their president.”
