Journalist Chris Whipple has called hogwash on rumors that Natalie Harp “recused” herself from Vanity Fair’s bombshell White House cover story from Dec. 2025, describing the aide as “a troubled young woman” as scrutiny over her closeness to President Donald Trump intensifies.
Harp has dominated headlines this week, ever since Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff namechecked her during an attack on Trump at a re-election rally, casting a spotlight on the 35-year-old aide that widened when the Daily Beast published her bizarre letters to the president in full.
Now, Whipple—whose 2025 Vanity Fair coverage of Trump’s inner circle became a viral flashpoint—has addressed speculation that Harp withdrew herself from the profile, which featured Trump’s brain trust of Susie Wiles, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Karoline Leavitt, among others.
Speaking with MS NOW’s Alex Witt on Saturday, Whipple dismissed the rumor, which has circulated among Harp’s defenders on social media, as “really ridiculous.”
“There’s a really ridiculous story going around… that Natalie Harp had ‘selflessly recused herself’ from a Vanity Fair White House photo session,” Whipple said.
“I’m here to tell you that nobody at Vanity Fair ever considered including her in that photo, and no one at the White House, to my knowledge,” he added.
Whipple also said that Harp wasn’t even mentioned in any of the tell-all meetings he had with Wiles in the 11 months leading up to his cover story.
“The name Natalie Harp never even came up,” Whipple said.
Whipple added that Harp’s relationship with the president—revealed in both her fawning 2023 letters to him and in her resurfaced Twitter account—is “extraordinarily unique.” He also raised concerns about a “fan-girl” having the president’s ear.
“Natalie Harp is clearly a troubled young woman with a need to idolize Donald Trump. Trump is getting his information from someone who wants to please [and] only tells him what he wants to hear,” Whipple said. “He’s getting his information, in effect, from a fact-free fan-girl, and that’s nobody’s idea of a staff secretary in a healthy White House.”
It comes amid a flurry of new details about Harp, a former right-wing news presenter and “human printer” who has been in Trump’s orbit in various roles since 2018.
On Saturday, Harp was revealed to have authored an angry memo Trump sent crying fraud in the 2020 election, and she was spotted accompanying him to the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, rally for Senate candidate Darline Graham on Saturday.
In the letters that first kicked off the media frenzy, Harp said she is “unworthy” of Trump, that he is “all that matters to me” and that she doesn’t “want to ever let [him] down.”
