A gleeful Natalie Harp practically skipped across the lawn as she arrived back at the White House with Donald Trump after spending the entire weekend with the president in Ireland.
Harp, Trump’s favorite aide who earns $150,000 a year as an executive assistant, flew with the president aboard Air Force One following the two-day trip and landed at Joint Base Andrews just before 10 p.m. Sunday.
The pair then continued their journey back to the White House together aboard Marine One, with photos showing 35-year-old Harp sitting right next to the 80-year-old president.
Trump arrived in Ireland on Saturday for a two-day trip, during which he met with Irish President Catherine Connolly and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, and visited his golf course in Doonbeg to watch the Irish Open.
Throughout his visit, Harp was never far from the president, and she was seen hopping along the White House lawn behind Trump after Marine One landed Sunday night.
Several members of Trump’s family, including Eric and Donald Trump Jr., their wives and children, also joined the president for the Ireland trip.
However, one person who was not present was first lady Melania Trump.
Analysis from the Daily Beast found that Melania has gone missing for weeks at a time during Trump’s second term and has made only a few dozen public appearances this entire year.
Trump even joked about Melania’s absence during a speech in Dublin on Saturday, which Harp watched.
“My wife is here in spirit. She’s watching right now,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Well, why don’t you come with me?’ She said, ‘Well, it’s a seven-hour trip. Maybe I’m not that friendly.’”
By contrast, Harp is rarely seen far from Trump, and her devotion to the president became so intense a few years ago that it raised concerns within the Secret Service.
She earned the nickname “human printer” because she constantly follows Trump around with a portable printer, supplying paper copies of emails, news articles, and other documents for him to read rather than having the 80-year-old president look at them on a screen.
Harp also left fawning letters around for Trump to find, including one that read: “You are all that matters to me.”
Early in his second term, Trump told his team that Harp “was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and his kids,” according to Regime Change, a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
“All of you will go off and make money,” Trump told other staffers. “She’ll never leave me.”
Last week, Melania’s top spokesman, Marc Beckman, denied that Harp’s obsession with the president is anything other than a professional relationship.
“The liberal media is ridiculous. They don’t know anything about the first lady’s personal and private life,” Beckman said.
“They’re obsessed with the gossip about this first family. And I could tell you firsthand that it’s time for them to become journalists and stop looking at the gossip.”
