Trump Hands Natalie Harp New Deeply Personal Role
The president’s ever-present aide keeps getting new responsibilities.
Nathan Howard/REUTERS
President Donald Trump has given his devoted aide the ultimate responsibility, according to D.C. insiders.
Natalie Harp, 35, has earned a reputation as Trump’s most ardent loyalist, helped in part by her fawning letters to the president, which the Daily Beast exposed in full.
Often pictured grinning widely and laughing with her 80-year-old boss, Harp is almost always by his side and screens what reaches his desk by printing positive news coverage and social media posts, whilst rejecting the material that might send the notoriously thin-skinned president into a meltdown.
President Donald Trump and his executive assistant Natalie Harp return from an America.gov AI event to the Oval Office.
Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS
The executive assistant to the president—to whom Trump has given a workspace ultra-close to his office—is now reportedly screening who gets to chat to Trump on his cellphone, too. Trump’s phone number is an open secret in Washington and journalists regularly try their luck by phoning him out of the blue.
Trump, whom the administration calls the “most accessible” president ever, often takes the calls and chats amicably with reporters.
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But now it appears he has an added layer of protection: Natalie Harp.
On Election Night, Politico reporter Dasha Burns, who has interviewed the president several times, decided to call him up during a live broadcast.
“Hi, may I ask who’s calling?” a young woman’s voice asks sternly when the call connects. “One moment, please,” the voice says after a brief pause. “Hey, Dasha,” Trump then says after the phone was apparently handed over to him.
Burns looked shocked as she waited to be connected. Multiple journalists who have Trump’s personal cell number have now confirmed they got the same treatment when they tried to reach Trump, according to The Independent.
Harp uses a mobile phone in the Oval Office at the White House in August.
Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERS
It appears to be a new phenomenon, with the incidence rate spiking in the last two days, since Trump’s midterm horror show.
The style is the same too; she answers, demands to know who’s calling, and then hands the phone to Trump, or doesn’t.
The woman, who The Independent surmises is Harp based on her voice, even tried to block one reporter until the president overheard and took the call, the publication reported.
The White House has been contacted for comment.
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