President Donald Trump’s most devoted aide has given up the desk she kept outside the Oval Office for a workspace considerably closer to her boss.
Natalie Harp, 35, Trump’s executive assistant, now works mostly out of the president’s private dining room just off the Oval Office, according to a report published Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026. Several administration officials familiar with the change in seating arrangements described it on condition of anonymity.
A Spot Cleared Among the Stacks
Trump, 80, uses the dining room to watch television, make phone calls and work through piles of printed news stories and documents that take up most of the space. A place has been cleared there for Harp, who uses it when she is not seated behind the president at his desk. Whether the arrangement is temporary or permanent is not known.
She is the one who supplies the paper. Harp prints hard copies of news articles and documents for Trump to read, a habit that earned her the nickname “human printer,” along with her help posting on Truth Social. She came to Trump’s side from the far-right One America News Network, hired as his special assistant at a salary of $150,000 a year.
Last year, Trump gave Harp and two other young female White House aides $45,000 in what were described as holiday gifts. At a rally in Nebraska on Oct. 5 he called her onstage, handed her a signed executive order and called her perfect, likening her to a model on a television game show. At a rally in Wasilla, Alaska, she was charged with delivering presidential pardons to him mid-speech. She has also been upgraded to riding in the back of the presidential limousine instead of traveling in the motorcade.
The Post Dictated Aboard Air Force One
The president was watching Bill Maher’s show for an appearance by former press secretary Karoline Leavitt when Maher’s monologue turned to Trump’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and Trump grew furious. Aboard Air Force One, he dictated a roughly 1,300-word Truth Social post to Harp.
“You’re not transformative, you’re a Loser!” Trump told Maher in the post.
Gloom has settled over the White House less than a week before Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 3, with the president keeping to a narrow circle of loyalists. Sixteen current and former administration officials and Trump allies, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, described the mood. Staffers are on edge as unfavorable polls and negative stories push Trump into a dark mood, amid fears that Republicans could lose control of both the House and the Senate.
The Adviser Likened to a Court Jester
Harp is not the only one feeding the president material. On flights to and from rallies, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte stops by the president’s Air Force One cabin, bringing memes, posters and documents about the mortgage industry. One administration official compared him to a court jester.
Pulte made the president a poster of Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, from his college football days, and Trump showed it off on Truth Social. Pulte has also pitched a 50-year mortgage and the idea of turning the White House press briefing room into a swimming pool. A photo of him presenting Trump with a poster board titled “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED” aboard Air Force One went viral. Ahead of the midterms, aides have been putting vast amounts of video clips and AI slop in front of the president.
Privately, Trump has been telling allies that Vice President JD Vance has not pulled large numbers to the events he headlines. White House spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said Trump works harder than anyone in the country, with Vance right behind him, and that both men are raising money and traveling for candidates. Vance addressed a crowd in Howell, Mich., on Oct. 27 for Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, a day after Trump rallied in Corinth, Miss.
Crowd size remains a sore subject. After a report that several areas of an upper deck sat empty at an Ohio rally, Trump called for journalists to be arrested, insisting on Truth Social that the arena was maxed out and that spectators in upper sections always migrate down to the main floor. The Trump War Room account on X accused a progressive account of fake news after it posted a photo of rows of empty seats at a Vance rally in Texas on Oct. 13.
Many Republicans in competitive races have tried to put distance between themselves and the president, and some GOP advisers and outside groups have privately warned his aides that battleground rallies may hurt more than help. Trump has waved off the concerns, intent on making the midterms a referendum on himself. Advisers bracing for the loss of at least the House expect him to shake up his staff depending on Tuesday’s results.
Harp’s attachment to the president is a matter of record. In intimate letters written to Trump in 2023, she told him she was unworthy of him and that she never wanted to let him down. “You are all that matters to me,” she wrote.