BS BULLETIN:
- Maggie Haberman says the Secret Service became “alarmed” by intensely personal letters Natalie Harp wrote Donald Trump in 2023, but the Secret Service itself does not appear to have publicly confirmed the more sensational claims about Harp.
- The fuller letters reveal Harp was grieving her father’s death, apologizing for mistakes and describing Trump in deeply emotional terms. People close to Trump have described their relationship as resembling father and daughter.
- Trump’s team has repeatedly defended Harp as a highly dedicated aide, with Steven Cheung calling her a “trusted and valued” member of Trump’s operation.
Newly published letters from one of President Donald Trump’s closest aides contain language that is undeniably unusual for workplace correspondence. But the emerging media narrative surrounding Natalie Harp may be running considerably faster than the publicly established facts.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN Thursday that Secret Service personnel had become “alarmed” by some letters Harp wrote Trump in 2023.
“The Secret Service had gotten alarmed by some of them,” Haberman told CNN, describing Harp as an intensely devoted aide who now sits just feet from the president and serves as an important conduit of information.
That makes for a dramatic story. But there is some important context. The more explosive version of the Secret Service story—that Harp was considered a possible danger to herself and the president—has circulated previously through author Michael Wolff’s reporting. The White House pushed back on Wolff’s broader portrayal, and senior Trump campaign officials had issued a blanket denunciation of his reporting, accusing him of concocting situations and conclusions.
The Secret Service itself does not appear to have publicly substantiated that dramatic characterization. Meanwhile, the full text of Harp’s correspondence provides considerably more context than the snippets now bouncing around cable television.
One letter begins not as a declaration of affection but as an apology. Harp describes becoming frightened after apparently being left outside Customs without her passport during overseas travel and says she should have contacted the Secret Service rather than Trump. She also apologizes over confusion involving her walking Trump’s golf course in Scotland and describes being concerned that various incidents had reflected poorly on her.
Then the letter becomes far more emotional. Harp describes grieving the death of her father and becoming distracted and overwhelmed. She worries about being diminished in Trump’s estimation and tells him she never wants to disappoint him. That is where the now-famous language appears.
“You are all that matters to me,” Harp wrote, before thanking Trump for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life.”
Those words are unquestionably intense. But there is another detail receiving considerably less attention. People close to Trump have previously described his relationship with Harp as resembling that of a father and daughter.
That context becomes particularly relevant when the letter itself repeatedly discusses the recent loss of Harp’s father. There is also a much longer history behind Harp’s extraordinary loyalty to Trump.
Harp is a cancer survivor who has publicly credited Trump’s Right to Try legislation with helping save her life by giving her access to experimental treatment. Her story brought her to Trump’s attention years before she became the ever-present aide now seen carrying papers and a portable printer around the president.
She eventually joined Trump’s operation in 2022, during a period when his political fortunes were far less certain, and became one of his most loyal staffers.
And Trump’s team hasn’t exactly been hiding its opinion of her. Steven Cheung, now White House communications director, previously called Harp a “trusted and valued member of President Trump’s team.” “Her work ethic and dedication to helping President Trump achieve his historic victory is second to none,” Cheung said.
Republican lawmakers who dealt with Harp also gave Fox News positive assessments of her work, portraying her as a highly responsive conduit who could quickly get information in front of Trump.
None of that requires pretending the letters are conventional. They aren’t. But unconventional and dangerous are two very different claims. And so are emotional devotion and whatever relationship some corners of the internet may now be tempted to imagine.
MY QUICK TAKE
Read the letters. All of them. Because that’s usually where these stories get more interesting.
If somebody handed me only the sentence “You are all that matters to me” from an employee to her boss, I’d raise an eyebrow too. Maybe both of them.
But then you discover that the woman writing it had recently lost her father. She’s talking about grief. She’s apologizing for screwing things up. She’s exhausted. She’s worried about disappointing somebody she deeply admires. And people around Trump have described him as treating her like a daughter.
Oh.
That’s slightly different from the Lifetime movie trailer we’re apparently auditioning for. And Harp believes—rightly or wrongly—that a law Trump championed helped save her life when she had cancer. Might that produce an unusually intense degree of gratitude and loyalty? I’d say that’s at least worth mentioning.
The legitimate questions about Harp are actually more interesting: How much access should any single aide have to a president? How much unfiltered information reaches Trump through her? What procedures govern that access? Those are fair questions.
But if we’re going to turn an emotionally overwrought letter from a grieving daughter into evidence of some sinister obsession, we’re going to need considerably more than adjectives from journalists and allegations attributed to anonymous people.
For now, the fairest description may also be the simplest: Natalie Harp appears to be extraordinarily devoted to Donald Trump. Nobody needed the Secret Service to figure that out.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- Mediaite — Maggie Haberman says Secret Service ‘had gotten alarmed’ by letters Trump received from Natalie Harp
- Fox News — Meet Natalie Harp, Trump’s ‘valuable resource’ who lawmakers say is ‘critical’ to his operation
- Washington Examiner — Who is Natalie Harp? Meet Donald Trump’s ‘human printer’
