Natalie Harp’s intimate letters to Donald Trump are being revealed in full for the first time—showing her spilling her heart, and saying she is “unworthy” of him.
“You are all that matters to me,” Harp writes to Trump, “I don’t want to ever let you down.”
The Daily Beast is publishing them amid swirling questions over the national security implications of 35-year-old Harp’s status as 80-year-old Trump’s most significant gatekeeper, even being used as a conduit to the president by foreign leaders. David Axelrod, a Senior Advisor to Barack Obama, described the situation as “a deadly serious issue” on Thursday.
Harp was one of the small number of people who accompanied Trump when he fled Air Force One in a catering truck in Turkey, leaving behind Secretary of State Marco Rubio, staff, and journalists, as flying decoys, while he flew in a secret plane, to avoid an apparent Iranian plot to target Air Force One.
The extraordinary letters were written in 2023, either during or after Harp accompanied Trump on a trip to Scotland and Ireland. She was 31 and Trump was 76. They reveal Harp’s utter devotion to Trump. She even tells him she is envious of women “whose only job seems to be to talk with you and look pretty.”
“I want that job!!” she writes in the letter, saying she missed the days when he would call “and we’d talk about everything and nothing.”
“We shouldn’t have to talk about work all the time!!” she tells Trump.
Harp also refers to herself by the nickname she was reportedly given by Trump’s staff: the “Human Printer,” because she printed out positive stories and reports for the president.
The two letters were handed to author and Inside Trump’s Head host Michael Wolff while he was writing his best-selling book, All or Nothing, which chronicled Trump’s 2024 campaign. It included extracts of the letters, and The New York Times later published shorter extracts from the same letters.
Asked to comment on behalf of Harp, White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded, “Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump’s team. The Fake News’s continued attacks on President Trump and his Administration prove exactly why trust in media is at historic lows. The media should get back to reporting real news and stop regurgitating Trump-Deranged liberal talking points.”
He also attacked Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, whose jibe on Sunday that Trump cared only about “traveling with Natalie” prompted a MAGA meltdown, and said, “Jon Ossoff is a feminine theatre [sic] kid who voted to massively raise taxes, give illegal immigrants free taxpayer-funded healthcare, and defund federal immigration enforcement and Border Patrol. Lightweight Jon’s rhetoric is cringeworthy, but his extreme voting record is dangerous.”
Wolff explains on the latest edition of the podcast to co-host Joanna Coles that he received Harp’s notes from sources in the Trump campaign who were worried about how close she was getting to Trump.
“The relationship here is not a relationship that should exist in a professional setting,” said Wolff.
Both the notes are in the form of folded printouts which appear to bear Harp’s signature.
Wolff said that the letters were “discovered by members of the staff” in the piles of printouts which Harp would deliver to Trump. They were photographed, and those images were in circulation among the campaign staff.
Wolff said that there was “a revolt” among staff at the time he was passed the letters. “The aides around Donald Trump knew that he was spending too much time with Natalie Harp, that her influence was growing and it was influence based on nothing at all. She had no experience,” he said.
Wolff said of the letters’ provenance. “I know who gave them to me. It comes from an extremely reliable source, and I know who saw the letters among the campaign, and there was no question these are what they are.”
The $150,000-a-year special assistant and executive assistant to the president now sits outside the Oval Office and is widely known as Trump’s “gatekeeper.” It emerged on Wednesday that for a year she declined to undertake a background check. It was also revealed that she has become a conduit for foreign leaders to reach the wartime president.
Harp is also said to have access to the president’s Truth Social account, and the random capital letters and misuse of grammar in her notes show an astonishing similarity in style to Trump’s social media messages.
The letters were written during, or immediately after, Trump’s May 2023 golfing trip to his courses in Aberdeen and Turnberry, Scotland, and Doonbeg, Ireland. Harp was photographed disembarking from Trump Force One in Aberdeen, and on the course at Turnberry. One of the letters is written as an apology, suggesting she was worried she upset Trump on the trip.
“I’m sorry,” she writes. “I thought I was the only one left behind last night, and had no idea Margot’s car was also pulled over, and sent back to the Airport,” she adds, apparently referring to White House communications adviser Margot Martin. The Daily Beast has verified that Martin was on the trip.
“Since I was alone in the van outside Customs, without my passport, I panicked, and should have just called Secret Service instead of you,” she wrote.
She also apologized for walking on the course, rather than being in a cart. “If there is anything else I have done to cause you trouble, please forgive me,” she continued. Photographs show Harp on the course, in line with what she said in the letter.
“I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).”
She shared that she was letting other people’s remarks upset her, “not because I care what other people think, but because I see myself being lowered in your eyes and good opinion. That is the fear you see, because I never want to bring you anything but joy.”
She thanks the former and future president for being “my Guardian and Protector in this life.”
Her second letter is even more intimate, thanking Trump for forcing her to “unplug.”
She writes about how much she enjoyed being on the golf course with the president.
“We could be out on the Course, with no machines, and even forget what time it was! I didn’t have to be “Human Printer.” I could take time to enjoy good conversation, and still get all my work done at the end of the day. In fact, I even had time to take long morning and evening walks to enjoy each Sunrise and Sunset (though I did forget to eat and sleep!).
Harp wrote that she noticed Trump was aware of her “slightly negative” mood at times. “I had no idea how rapidly I was approaching burnout, and starting to envy those whose only “job” seems to be to talk with you and look pretty. I want that job!!" she writes.
“So many times, I’m just trying to stay afloat with all that’s coming in for you, I look like a hunchback who didn’t have time to freshen up. (at least you know what I should look like)!”
The former presenter for the One America News Network, or OAN, said she missed her “Talkshow days” when he would call her up. “I’ve always felt like an in-betweener, somewhere between Staff and those you enjoy talking to on the Plane or at Dinner, because that’s who I used to be to you when I was a “Talkshow Host” (as much as I hated that actual job!). I wish I could hear every conversation, because that’s when you’re having a good time, getting away from it all, at least for a few moments," she writes.
Describing the letter as “self-analysis,” she said her goal was to make Trump proud.
“And please, when I fail, will you tell me?” she writes. “You have the absolute right to cuss me out, if need be, when I deserve it, because no one knows or cares about me more.”
Harp, who grew up in California, was first noticed by the president when she spoke on Fox News in 2019 and gave credit for legislation he signed the year before for helping her recover from bone cancer. Experts have questioned whether his legislation could have helped, given her public statements about the timeline of the illness. She spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2020, and was involved in Trump’s campaign that year. She then worked for the OAN Network until 2022, when she joined Trump’s team as an assistant.
In a P.S. to one of the notes, Harp writes that “My hands looked worse in Scotland and Ireland because the Cold turns the old ‘scars’ purple.” Photographs show her right hand appears to have a scar, and be subject to discoloration of her fingers. She also mentions “coming home to my roots.” The Beast has been unable to establish if she had a Scottish or Irish ancestor.
Her brother, Preston, from whom she is estranged, told CNN that he believes his sister has an “unhealthy obsession” with the president.
Harp’s father, Robert, a real estate broker, died by suicide in 2020. She was brought up in a deeply Christian household; her father had studied at Dallas Theology Seminary, in Texas, and her mother, Jill, studied Christian education and the Bible at Wheaton College, an Evangelical liberal arts school. Harp is a graduate of Point Loma Nazarene University, a Christian school in San Diego, California, and Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, which was founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Her estranged brother has said that Harp had refused to acknowledge publicly the way in which he died. The family was not a stranger to tragedy; her aunt Karen Fine, her father’s sister, died in 2009 of lung cancer, and the second of his three sisters, Tina Norris, died of cancer in 2016.
In the letters, she writes to Trump that she won’t forget a pledge he made following his death. “Thank you for always being there for me—I’ll never forget when you made that promise to me after losing my Dad, and I know how happy he is right now that I did get to go to Scotland and Ireland, as he always wanted for me,” she writes.
“To modify a classic, “I could not have parted with you, to anyone less worthy”—And, I will add, it is I who is unworthy."
She signs off one of the letters, “With all my heart, Natalie.”
Ending the other one, she writes: “Always, Natalie.”
It is signed in Sharpie.
