FATAL BLOW?

Natalie Harp Knifes Ice Maiden and Sparks Trump ‘Freakout’

The president’s 35-year-old aide is rubbing salt in the wound as he decides the fate of his powerful chief of staff.

Donald Trump’s favorite aide sent him into a total meltdown by handing him a printed copy of a bombshell report about how he’s thinking of firing his chief of staff.

Natalie Harp, 35, printed Politico’s Playbook newsletter out for the 80-year-old president to read on Thursday morning, the outlet reported on Friday.

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The story sparked a “freakout” as he “blew up” over its coverage of his secret calls to close allies asking who they think should replace Susie Wiles, the ruthless aide so central to the president’s political operation that he calls her his “Ice Maiden,” Politico’s sources said.

Wiles and her supporters have since “burn[ed] up phones around town” in trying to calm things down, people familiar with the situation told the outlet.

“The White House is in a state of panic,” one insider said. “Susie is looking over her shoulder, trying to solicit people to go out and say good things about her and her team and make it seem like everything is fine.”

“It’s not,” they added.

Politico’s revelations that Trump has cooled on Wiles come ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, where the president’s tanking approval ratings have helped Democrats gain a 9-point overall lead over Republicans in the race for control of the House and Senate.

The president, for his part, has flat-out denied that any of the reported calls took place. “TOTAL FAKE NEWS Politico doesn’t care about facts, integrity, or honest journalism,” he said in a statement to the outlet on Thursday.

“Susie Wiles is my loyal and longest serving Chief of Staff—and there is a reason for that,” he added. “She has been with me since the beginning, is my trusted advisor, and has my COMPLETE confidence.”

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Harp, nicknamed the “human printer” by other aides for her habit of printing out articles and online comments for the president to read, chose to share Politico’s reporting with the president after months of reported tension with his chief of staff.

Wiles, like other members of Trump’s team, is understood to have been disturbed by the young assistant’s unusually close and devoted relationship with Trump. Harp earns $150,000 a year as “Special Assistant and Executive Assistant to the President.”

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The president is now weighing several names as potential replacements for Wiles, according to Politico.

They include Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, special envoy Steve Witkoff, housing chief Bill Pulte, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and Randy Levine, president of the New York Yankees.

The outlet added Jay Clayton, the president’s Director of National Intelligence, to the list on Friday.

Rumors that Wiles’ departure could be imminent have sparked a vicious battle among those rival candidates, the Washington Post reports.

Miller, Pulte, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin have apparently begun jockeying for the position even as Wiles insists she has no plans to leave it any time soon.

Trump appears to have fired the starting pistol himself by hiring Katie Zacharia as his new press secretary without consulting his chief of staff, in a move others in the West Wing saw as blatantly undermining Wiles.

Some MAGA allies who’ve taken calls from the president have only been too willing to provide him with damaging feedback on his chief of staff and suggestions for who could take over if he gives her the boot.

“She’s burned a lot of people,” one Republican strategist told Politico on Thursday.

They haven’t had to look far for ammunition. “Susie has this whole cadre of people that have been found to have been monetizing [Trump’s] ecosystem pretty dramatically,” another adviser added.

Katie Wiles, the chief of staff’s daughter, was reported this month to have joined two Wiles allies, former White House aide James Blair and Trump’s former campaign guru Chris LaCivita, in working for Republika Srpska.

Only on Thursday, The New York Times reported more details about the younger Wiles’ professional engagements in the autonomous, pro-Russian ethnic Serb territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including visits to a gas pipeline in the region with a Texas energy executive.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.

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