Jon Stewart called out President Trump’s scandalous relationship with his 35-year-old aide Natalie Harp.
Harp has been the 80-year-old president’s devoted executive assistant throughout his second term, and has been described by New York Times reporter and Trump biographer Maggie Haberman as his “human binkie.” Harp has rarely appeared to leave his side and reportedly helps him draft his many late-night Truth Social rants.
Harp’s current annual salary is $150k, and Trump has given her gifts worth over tens of thousands of dollars. In late August, journalist Michael Woolf uncovered two of Harp’s fawning letters to Trump. ”You are all that matters to me," she wrote to Trump in 2023. “Thank you for being my Guardian and Protector in this Life.”
Stewart addressed Harp’s letters in his monologue Monday, referring to them as “love letters” and raising the alarm about her role in Trump’s administration.
“This is unbelievable,” Stewart said. “The outside world is somehow fed into this woman, a single conduit. And from there, she is the filter to all of the information that is directly fed into Donald Trump’s psyche.”
“By the way, Natalie Harp had repeatedly declined to get security clearances. Can we even trust her?” Stewart asked.
Stewart jokingly showed edited footage of Nathan Fielder’s new documentary, You Can See Everything. He implicitly compared Harp to Elizabeth Holmes, the infamous founder of Theranos, who is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for fraud.
Harp, a former conservative news anchor at One America News Network, has also been dubbed by Trump’s staff (and by herself) as Trump’s “Human Printer” because she often prints out positive stories that flatter him.
Stewart mocked this story by having correspondent Ronny Chieng walk on stage with his own printer. “Good news coming in,” Chieng said, as Stewart took a page out of the printer and read the headline.
“Oh my god!” Stewart read in mock-excitement. “Late-night television has never been more fiscally robust and governmentally appreciated!?”
Stewart blamed Harp for helping Trump keep up his “reality distortion field,” and compared her to the blue pill in The Matrix. Whereas the red pill in the movie lets people see their world clearly, the blue pill lets them stay ignorant.
Stewart’s concerns echoed those of fellow late-night host Seth Meyers, who in late August criticized Trump for choosing to use one of his devout worshipers as his main “pipeline to real information.”
“Should [Trump] choose to pull the correct levers, he would have more information about anything than you and I could ever get our hands on,” Meyers said. “And instead he’s asking this person with a chair against the wall to print it out on her little handheld.”
