Everything I Know About Trump’s Love Affair, I Learned Against My Will

Please, make it stop.

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Everything I have learned about Donald Trump’s bizarre relationship with White House aide Natalie Harp has been against my will. Every new story raises more questions than it answers — and at minimum, what we’re looking at sure seems like an emotional affair between the President of the United States and a taxpayer-funded staffer nearly fifty years his junior.

When I shot a YouTube video about this yesterday, I blurted out something that stuck with me: Donald Trump can’t even have a normal affair like a typical politician. It has to be some of the weirdest shit you’ve ever heard.

Consider what we actually know about Natalie Harp. She’s a true believer — a former OAN anchor who has swallowed every lie Trump has ever told. According to her own brother, she has a history of obsessing over Republican presidents and writing them love letters. She writes Trump love letters now. She sleeps on a cot in a locker room at Mar-a-Lago. She once got into a shouting match with the Secret Service because there wasn’t room for her in the back of an SUV — so she climbed into the trunk like a little kid. For a long stretch, she didn’t even have a security clearance, making her a national security incident waiting to happen. She follows him around like a sad little puppy dog.

And when Trump abandoned Marco Rubio on Air Force One because he was worried Iran might assassinate him, he made damn sure to take Natalie Harp with him.

I don’t know the true nature of their relationship. Maybe none of us ever will. Some people think her job is changing the man’s diapers. Others think it’s a physical affair. And frankly, whether they're actually sleeping together isn't the most important question here. I don’t know. What I do know is how the White House has responded — and that tells you everything.

This conversation was kickstarted by Senator Jon Ossoff, who casually dropped Natalie’s name into the middle of a speech this weekend — a brilliant Easter egg for the media to become obsessed with. But the Harp reference wasn't really the point. Ossoff’s actual point was simple: Donald Trump is focused on anything other than doing his job. He’d rather golf, jet around the world, slap his name on shit, and yammer about his ballroom than do a single thing that might improve your life — end the illegal war in Iran, get gas prices back down, or make sure our sailors have enough food and provisions on these record-long deployments.

And every single time a MAGA hack or a White House staffer lashes out at Ossoff, or pushes back against the now-numerous leaks about Natalie Harp, they prove his point. They care more about this than they care about you. You are their boss. Donald Trump works for you. Natalie Harp works for you. She’s an adult and a taxpayer-funded staffer, and it is perfectly reasonable to ask questions about her relationship with the president when she appears to be a threat to our national security and our domestic tranquility. Not because the gossip is salacious, but because her extraordinary access and influence raise legitimate questions about who has power inside this White House.

Because set aside the weirdness for a second. Natalie Harp is the person who feeds Donald Trump his information. She’s his “human printer.” She shapes the worldview of the President of the United States. She’s the one who allegedly posted the racist AI-generated image of Barack and Michelle Obama. Just yesterday, it was reported that world leaders go through her to reach Trump. So forget the alleged affair for a second. Who controls the information reaching the President of the United States? Who controls access to him? Who gets to shape what the most powerful person in the world sees, hears, and believes? These are reasonable, credible questions about how a young staffer with a fascinatingly weird background is shaping America’s government — and leaving you worse off. Senator Ossoff has every right to ask them. So does every American.

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And let me be clear: I have zero sympathy for the MAGA movement screaming from the rooftops about how offensive it is to mention a female staffer. Where was the outrage for a decade of Donald Trump’s attacks on women? I might have a shred of sympathy for their argument if they hadn’t spent ten years defending his sexism and his abuse.

This is a man all over the Epstein files, which he continues to try to bury. A man credibly accused of multiple sexual assaults. A man currently paying out millions to E. Jean Carroll after being found liable for sexual abuse — the civil equivalent of an adjudicated rapist. A man who invited Bill Clinton’s accusers to a debate to rattle Hillary. A man who, just last week, attacked Abdul El-Sayed’s wife — and not one of these fucks said a word. They've spent a decade cheering while Donald Trump attacks women, humiliates them, and weaponizes their personal lives for political gain. Apparently, their concern for the dignity of women begins exactly where Donald Trump's humiliation does.

The pushback tells you everything. If this weren’t a real problem for Trump, his White House, and his movement, they would have ignored a throwaway line in a Senate speech. Instead, it hit a nerve. It pissed off Trump. It pissed off Melania. The reporting says they thought it was “below the belt” — which is hilarious, because below the belt is the only place Donald Trump ever punches.

For the first time in a long time, a major Democratic politician has gotten this far under Trump’s skin and put the entire White House on tilt. Staffers are falling over themselves to leak on Harp to get her fired — though I doubt it works, because Trump seems as devoted to her as she is to him. It’s symbiotic. And the harder they fight to make questions about Harp off-limits, the more important those questions become.

So the media needs to stay on this. Independent creators need to stay on this. You need to stay on this. And not because we need to know whether Donald Trump is having an affair. We need to know who is exercising power around the President of the United States. This is a woman who shapes Trump’s worldview, controls his narrative, controls his time, controls his mind — while the man himself is in serious cognitive decline. Yesterday he stood in front of the White House bragging that he’s “very good at flagpoles.” I don’t know what the fuck that means, and no amount of context will make it sound sane.

We’re in a scary moment. Asking hard questions about who surrounds a president waging an illegal war, wrecking the global economy, and stealing billions from the American people isn’t just fair — it’s your patriotic duty. Who has his ear? Who controls his access? Who decides what information reaches him? Those aren’t gossip-column questions. They’re questions about power. And power necessitates accountability. Don’t let them shame you out of asking them. Donald Trump works for you. Natalie Harp works for you. This government belongs to you. Questioning your government is the whole point. Especially when the people running it are begging you to look away.

With urgency,

—Mike