For Washington insiders observing how the Trump administration conducts its business, Natalie Harp is an alarming figure.
The 35-year-old White House aide appears never to leave the president’s side, whether he is meeting a world leader in the Oval Office or playing golf. Her influential role has been questioned, and ridiculed, for years.
Harp’s nickname is “the human printer”; she is rarely seen without a sheaf of documents ready for her boss. When it emerged that those documents included highly personal letters she had written to him, laying bare her devotion, insider gossip turned into public soap opera.
A political attack line delivered by Democratic senator Jon Ossoff put her in the public spotlight when he said of the president: “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
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Shawn McCreesh, a White House reporter for The New York Times, explains this latest, and perhaps most puzzling, controversy to hit the Trump administration.
Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan, with Andrew McNair.
