How Natalie Harp Keeps Fueling Trump’s Delusions

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images Donald Trump’s fawning aide Natalie Harp is helping keep the president cocooned in a “distorted version of reality,” according to two experts.

The 80-year-old president has shown a remarkable disconnect from political reality , routinely claiming to be one of the most popular presidents ever even as a range of polls shows his approval rating plunging into the low 30 percent range amid his quagmire war with Iran.

Harp, the president’s 35-year-old executive assistant, plays a key role in fueling his delusions while soothing him through his setbacks, according to Hugh Dougherty, the Daily Beast’s executive editor.

Dougherty said on The Daily Beast Podcast that Harp serves as a kind of “gatekeeper” to the president, filtering the information that makes its way to him, from messages to news stories, by printing it out.

“Donald Trump doesn’t consume information in the same way as other presidents have.

He is relying on information that’s given to him in the form of printouts by Natalie Harp,” Dougherty said.

“And she is giving him weird, crazy stuff from the internet.

We know this because he then puts it on Truth Social—or she posts it for him.” Joanna Coles, the Daily Beast’s chief content officer and host of The Daily Beast Podcast , noted that Trump appears to be glued to Harp -- describing it akin to a father-daughter relationship -- as multiple crises close in around him, foremost among them Republicans’ increasingly bleak midterm outlook.

She suggested the president is taking refuge in Harp’s unwavering loyalty and devotion, which she expressed in a series of letters, including one that reportedly declared, “You are all that matters to me,” and another signed, “With all my heart, Natalie.” “I would like to hang out with Natalie if I were the president.

She looks like she’s a good news bearer,” Coles quipped.

Dougherty pointed out that Trump has been hit with a string of departures from the White House, including his press secretary Karoline Leavitt, one of his most trusted aides, who quit after he reportedly called repeatedly while she was on maternity leave to ask when she was coming back.

Harp, meanwhile, is someone that the president—whose wife, Melania, does not live at the White House—can “reliably turn to to be there,” Dougherty said.

Trump told his team early in his second term that Harp “was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and his kids,” according to Regime Change , the book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

“In a medieval court, just being in the presence of the king was what mattered,” Dougherty added.