Washington — Most Americans probably hadn’t heard of Natalie Harp before this week, but the close Trump aide has been in the political spotlight in recent days. 

The 35-year-old’s official title is special assistant and executive assistant to the president, and she is frequently seen at President Trump’s side, by all accounts unwavering in her support and known for being quick to provide printouts of positive news coverage for his perusal. 

It was Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat running for reelection, who focused attention on her role during a Sunday campaign rally. Ossoff said the president wants to “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie” rather than focus on his day job. 

The remark prompted pushback from the president.

“You mean Pee-wee Herman? Pee-wee Herman look-alike?” the president replied about Ossoff when a reporter asked him about the comment Monday in the Oval Office. 

She’s one of the president’s most trusted aides 

Mr. Trump, 80, often dictates Truth Social posts for Harp to type out and post. She became known as the “human printer” during the 2024 presidential campaign, as the New York Times reported at the time, because she carried a portable printer to quickly get positive news to the president. Mr. Trump often prefers to read physical copies of social media posts and news stories, rather than off screens. 

Harp started working at the White House as a presidential appointee when Mr. Trump took office in January 2025. 

Mr. Trump has taken note of Harp’s loyalty. In their book “Regime Change,” New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported that the president remarked of Harp to staffers, “All of you will go off and make money. She’ll never leave me.”

The White House has taken issue with Ossoff’s remarks, with White House communications director Stephen Cheung calling Ossoff the biggest “loser in politics,” among other things. 

“Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest working aides on President Trump’s team,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told CBS News in a statement, calling Ossoff’s rhetoric “cringeworthy.”

Harp was among the few aides who traveled with the president on a secret plane from Turkey

As CBS News reported earlier this month, Harp was among the few aides who were transported in a catering truck and then a secret plane with Mr. Trump as he departed Turkey in July. 

Sources say the Secret Service adopted the ruse to protect the president after U.S. intelligence detected a possible Iranian plot to fire a missile at his plane as he left Ankara. 

Only a few others joined the secret flight, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House aides Walt Nauta and Dan Scavino. Several top Cabinet members were left on the decoy plane along with other staff and the press corps.

Harp’s background before the White House 

Harp worked at One America News Network in 2021 and 2022, hosting a TV show. On the pro-Trump network, Harp repeated Mr. Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 presidential election. 

Harp delivered a laudatory speech at the Republican National Convention in 2020 about the president’s signing of the Right to Try Act, a 2018 federal law that lets patients with life-threatening illnesses try experimental treatments. Harp, a bone cancer survivor, credited Mr. Trump with saving her life. 

“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” she said in her address. “They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”

However, the Washington Post reported Harp has also spoken of being treated with an FDA-approved immunotherapy given off-label, which would not have required “right to try” since it was already approved for some uses. 

Harp, a California native, earned her bachelor’s degree from Point Loma Nazarene University in 2012, and her MBA from Liberty University in 2015.