Do you know the name Natalie Harp? Not many people do. Natalie has a very special job in the incoming political Trumpscape: She’s his “human printer.”
At least, that’s what everyone else calls her. Who knows what Trump himself might affix to her as a nickname. She’s not just a go-fer, as it were. A go-fer would be a kind of glorified DoorDasher, bringing the boss Diet Cokes as often as memos.
No, Natalie had to distinguish herself amongst the cadre of professional Trump Girls™ the famously lecherous former pageant owner surrounds himself with. How could Natalie possibly compete with all of them?
- Melania: It may be by default, but the First Lady is the Trump Girl™ in chief
- Ivanka: She’s too busy teaching her litter of Trump pups Chinese to be of any help in the administration this time around, but since the day of her birth, she’s been the O.G. Trump Girl™
- Lara: Stole a whole-ass famous song and made it about Donald, cementing her place as RNC chair and creepy also-ran of Trump Girls™
- Pam Bondi: Once took a bribe in return for dropping a lawsuit against him; her loyalty makes her Trump Girl™ on the rise
- Kristi Noem: Handy to have around if any puppies get out of line; Mt. Rushmore Fireworks Trump Girl™
- Karoline Leavitt: Way-Prettier-Than-Sarah-Sanders and twice as mean Trump Girl™
The list goes on, and we haven’t really even looked back at his first administration. Hope Hicks may have testified against him eventually, but every time she got on the plane with him, everyone wondered what was happening at 30,000 feet.
Apparently, however, there is no woman closer to Donald Trump than Natalie Harp, and it seems like she got there through pure, unadulterated sycophancy. According to the New York Times, she literally acts as his conduit, and stays within earshot in case he beckons.
“Little known beyond Mr. Trump’s immediate orbit, Ms. Harp is now poised to play a potentially influential role in his White House, sitting right outside the Oval Office and acting as the conduit for a largely unsupervised flow of information to and from the president and helping him with his social media feed,” says the Times.
Oh. She’s the thumbs for his smartphone of life.
Because for as much as Trump communicates via social media and fundraising emails and viral videos, he hates to do that stuff himself. He loves, however, to watch it being done. In fact, he likes to dictate messages himself in real time, as you can observe in this video of Harp (and others) accompanying Trump as he watches Kamala Harris’s speech at the DNC. The rest of the room offers suggestions and helps brainstorm; she diligently types out everything he says verbatim.
He’s almost sitting in her lap. Watch as he barely hears his closest aides unless they say certain keywords that make him happy. He speaks only to her.
So why the “human printer” moniker? She earned that name, according to the Times, because “she followed Mr. Trump around with a portable printer and a battery pack to charge it, so she could hand him information in hard copy, as he prefers.”
Once while he was golfing in Scotland, she ran behind his golf cart to keep him up to date and fill his ears with positive stories about him. If Donald Trump (sorry in advance for this) were a porn star, Natalie Harp would be his fluffer [2].
In fact, the excellent reporting in the NYT explains a lot about why and how Trump gets and disseminates ridiculous things. As the report notes, “A top adviser to Mr. Trump used to say he would ask 49 people what they thought of something, stopping only at 50 if the last person told him what he wanted to hear.”
Often, Harp was number 50 in that scenario. Her role is so outsized for someone not managed by another senior staffer that it’s begun to worry some of the people closest to Trump. Because she feeds him what he wants constantly, he very rarely wonders at the veracity of anything she says. If it’s something good about him, it must be true, right?
But those letters. The letters that got her the role in THIS administration. Holy cow, you guys.
“You are all that matters to me. I don’t ever want to let you down. [Thank you for being my] Guardian and Protector in this Life.”
“I want to bring you joy, to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work.'”
These letters, written just last year after she’d been an aide during his campaign, were physically seen by the New York Times and their authenticity verified by two people with direct knowledge (and probably a little disdain for her saccharine suck-up act).
In return for her undying devotion, he has sat her next to his throne. Those who hold a grudge against someone can now come to her with ugly stories about that person, knowing that she’ll immediately and without fact-checking a word deliver the story to Trump, and he will turn against the person they complained about.
In case we haven’t yet driven home the point: If a person could be charged as an accomplice in a case of defamation, Natalie Harp would likely owe E. Jean Carroll [3] some money as well. There were more than 40 messages attacking Carroll after she won her case against him for the sexual abuse, and those messages were used to find him liable in the second case of defamation. Harp pressed send on every one of them.
We’ll see how well she meshes with the rest of the team. I have a feeling others are now going to have to get on HER good side as well.