Both the White House and Republicans it brought in to circle the wagons erupted with fury over Senator Jon Ossoff’s reference in a speech to Trump’s “travel with Natalie.”
He was referring to Trump’s 35-year-old executive assistant, Natalie Harp, who is with him everywhere—including in the catering cart used to sneak him onto another plane, on which she accompanied him, after a specific assassination threat against Trump surfaced during his trip to Turkey last month.
Ossoff’s point was that Trump is living in a bubble, as he explained in interviews after the clip went viral, soothed by White House aides who are his security blankets as he focuses on his ballroom and his palace in the sky, gifted to him by Qatar. Ossoff torched Trump over the war in Iran and his massive corruption, while the president focuses on his pet projects and the American people are hurt by inflation and high gas prices.
It’s something Ossoff has been doing for months, in a very calibrated way: connecting Trump enriching himself and spending Americans’ money on wasteful projects to the issue of affordability among American voters. And Ossoff is leading Republican Mike Collins in recent polls.
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The White House and Republicans in general are clearly worried about Ossoff, as he’s leading in a race in Georgia that they had hoped to flip while also giving other Democrats running in the midterms a blueprint for how to campaign. Likely for that reason, they’ve stayed mostly silent rather than elevate him.
But they took the “travel with Natalie” bait—a brilliant move on Ossoff’s part. The GOP response caused Trump and Harp’s relationship—and Ossoff’s overall criticism of Trump’s negligence and corruption—to break through big time in the media.
White House communications director Steven Cheung had a meltdown, calling Ossoff the “biggest cuck loser in politics,” while another aide called him a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama.” (Comparing Ossoff to Obama—the most popular living former president—doesn’t seem like a great strategy.) Trump responded by lamely labeling Ossoff “Pee-wee Herman.” Various other GOP politicians said it was wrong and “below the belt” to go after an aide.
Some among the pundits saw the response as a way for Republicans to finally turn things on Ossoff, portraying him as attacking a poor, defenseless, loyal aide—and insinuating that there’s a sexual relationship between her and Trump. And that may be part of the GOP strategy in its response, though, to be clear, Ossoff wasn’t trying to portray the relationship as sexual but as exemplary of the cocoon Trump is living in.
That gets closer to why the White House seems so intent on tamping down the discussion. Looking at what the White House in particular is saying in these enraged and bombastic attacks, and looking at Harp’s background and what’s previously been reported—but has largely stayed under the radar—it’s pretty clear they are deeply uncomfortable with this story.
And there’s a reason for that: The relationship exposes Trump’s narcissism and his need for unquestioning adoration, while also exposing the cultishness of the people who surround and enable him.
CNN reports that in 2023 Harp was intent on attending one of Trump’s court appearances and was stopped by security at Trump Tower:
A screaming match in the lobby ensued, with Harp insisting that Trump had personally asked her to attend the court appearance, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Denied a seat but determined not to be left behind, Harp jumped into an SUV trunk, according to the two sources and confirmed by a photo obtained by CNN.
Now Harp’s own brother, talking about this on CNN last night, called that “sad” and “an unhealthy obsession.”
Harp has no real expertise on anything. She’s a former right-wing television host—on OAN— who began working for Trump after stating that he saved her life. Harp is described as the bridge between Trump and the world outside his bubble. She passes messages to him from other Republicans, writes out Truth Social posts he dictates and gives him articles that praise him. She is glued to his side all day long.
“[Trump] likes the attention and the fact that she is 100% committed and loyal,” one White House adviser told CNN. “She doesn’t second guess, doesn’t question.”
This has caused enormous tension inside the White House. They can’t control the relationship or Trump’s interactions with Harp, and apparently Harp has brushed off other aides, saying she reports only to Trump himself.
The ubiquity sometimes ruffles feathers within the White House, especially for some Trump advisers who at times have wanted to meet privately with the president — only to find Harp sitting in on the meeting as well, one of the sources familiar with the dynamic told CNN. The 35-year-old is also territorial about Trump and has told others that she only reports to him, irritating other staffers who work within the White House’s chain of command, another source said.
And this is where the story becomes about much more than an unusual relationship between a president and an aide. It’s not only about the cultishness surrounding Trump and his own narcissism. Harp is one of the people helping determine what Trump sees—and what the rest of us see coming from Trump.
And that includes the hate that spews from his Truth Social account. Harp is apparently the aide who shared the horrendous racist post on Trump’s Truth Social account depicting the Obamas as apes.
All of this—from the content Harp shares to the relationship itself—is not what the White House wants above the radar. And the irony is that the White House itself helped put it there.
They clearly have little control over the relationship and can’t stop it, even as they’ve tried. So when Jon Ossoff went viral with three words—“travel with Natalie”—it caused chaos around something they can’t manage. Their only recourse has been to portray Ossoff as picking on an aide and insinuating a sexual relationship.
But so far, that strategy has done something else entirely: It has made a lot more people ask who Natalie Harp is, why she has such extraordinary access to the president—and why the White House is so desperate to stop people from talking about it.
Mike – very astute column, which leaves the question of why none of the Democrats circling around the nomination for 2028 have the guts to do what Ossoff did? It leaves unanswered the question of why the media has never raised it. In my mind, he should get the nomination by acclamation for 2028 if he wins, and if Keisha wins for governor.
Hi Mike, it seems we need to add sleeping in a locker room all summer and jumping into the storage section of a presidential caravan to the TDS list that already includes wearing a maxi pad on your ear and wearing diapers on the outside of your trousers… Totally normal behavior🫨🫨🫨🫨