Melania Trump’s top aide has revealed their true thoughts about Natalie Harp, whose close relationship with her boss, Donald Trump, has fueled recent speculation.
Harp, Trump’s executive assistant, has been thrust into the political spotlight in recent weeks with reports that she slept in the locker room at Trump’s Bedminster golf club and even hopped in the trunk of an SUV to stay close to the president.
Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat from Georgia up for re-election, made headlines for his quip about Trump, telling a crowd in Atlanta last month, “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.”
Marc Beckman, senior advisor to Melania, dismissed any rumors that her husband’s relationship with Harp is anything but above board on an episode of conservative media personality Stella Escobedo’s YouTube show released Tuesday.
“The mainstream media…they’re endlessly obsessed with garbage tabloid gossip about Natalie Harp, who, by the way, is a hard-working, loyal White House aide to President Trump—a cancer survivor—who POTUS helped get off labeled treatment for and saved her life. I mean, what do you make of that?” Escobedo asked Beckman.
open image in galleryHarp, who says she was diagnosed with bone cancer, gained national attention in 2019 for crediting Trump for saving her life with a law he signed in 2018 that provided her access to experimental treatments.
“The liberal media is ridiculous. They don’t know anything about the first lady’s personal and private life,” Beckman told Escobedo. “They don’t even take the time to put us on air to cover these incredible achievements that our first lady has accomplished.”
“What they need to do is look in the mirror because they’re all attacking this hardworking, very talented, very intelligent person in Natalie Harp,” he said, adding that the mainstream media is “obsessed with the gossip with the first family. And I can tell you firsthand that it’s time for them to become journalists and stop looking at the gossip.”
open image in galleryThe public started to pay closer attention to Harp after The Washington Post reported last month that she was one of the select few who got to ride with Trump in a catering truck that transported them from Air Force One to a smaller jet amid a potential assassination threat from Iran while they were leaving the NATO summit in Turkey. During Trump’s escape, Air Force One, which carried unsuspecting D.C. reporters and senior Trump officials, served as a decoy.
Harp —who reportedly received a $45,000 holiday cash gift from Trump — wrote in a letter to Trump in 2023, “You are all that matters to me,” The New York Times reported shortly after the president’s 2024 election victory in an article announcing that she would follow him to the White House after joining his team in 2022.
While Harp seems to never leave Trump’s side, Melania has been largely absent from the public eye during her husband’s second term.
Over the summer, Melania missed Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral, the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and the dignified transfer of the remains of four service members killed in the Middle East.
NBC News reported on August 17 that Melania has made about half as many public appearances as she did at that point in Trump’s first term.