Even More Troubling Than Weird Natalie? Vicious White House Attacks On Women
She is the human printer, controlling the flow of paper to the president and transcribing his social media posts. She thinks she owes her life to Donald Trump. She is always by his side. Her name is Natalie Harp. She is this week's troubling news.
On Sunday, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, a rising Democratic star, hit Trump hard: The Georgia senator told a crowd that Trump "doesn't want to do the job" and instead "wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar."
What's newsworthy about that? It was news to most of us that of the very few aides whose lives Trump valued most — the ones who switched planes with him, sending Air Force One as the decoy — was Natalie Harp. Not the Secretary of State or the Secretary of the Treasury. Natalie Harp.
Kristen Holmes, a senior White House correspondent at CNN and a well-respected journalist, asked Trump to respond to Ossoff's comment. Trump went off the deep end and the White House response team did the rest.
When Holmes asked Trump in the Oval Office to respond to Ossoff's remark, the president dismissed her, calling the senator a "Pee-wee Herman lookalike".
"Quiet, quiet, quiet. You're very disrespectful." After she told him she worked for CNN, he responded, "Fake news, you're fake news, you're a loud, boisterous person. You're fake news. Be quiet. Be quiet. You're a fake reporter and you report fake news."
The White House's "rapid response" social media account then took over, posting the exchange and calling her a "disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession".
The post criticized her for taking a "cheap shot" at a staffer, adding: "These scumbags are the lowest of the low."
Then they called her a bad mother, sending out yet another post attacking the CNN reporter: "Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It's quite troubling."
Natalie Harp was diagnosed with Stage 2 bone cancer in the early 2010s. She credits a bill signed by Donald Trump with giving her access to experimental treatment.
"We all know the story about the Good Samaritan. But what you don't know is I was that forgotten person on the side of the road ... and left to die of cancer," Harp reportedly said at an event with the president in 2019. "But then, an outsider — my Good Samaritan, President Donald J. Trump — he saw me there and he didn't walk by. He stopped."
Not exactly. According to the experts, as reported in The Washington Post, the drug Harp credited Trump with helping her gain access to was already approved by the Food and Drug Administration at the time she received it. Experts said she would have been able to access it without "Right to Try," which is a pathway to access medication not yet approved by the FDA.
Harp's story got Trump's attention and a speaking role at the 2020 Convention. She has been by his side ever since.
Harp's loyalty to Trump and his to her is noteworthy. But what is more noteworthy is Trump's attitude to the press and women reporters in particular. "Quiet, piggy," he told a Bloomberg reporter; and another CNN journalist he called "corrupt" and stormed out of NBC's Meet the Press after calling the moderator "crooked or stupid." Meanwhile, ABC has taken the FCC to court for threatening its license renewals because the President doesn't like the coverage.
Natalie Harp is not really the issue. The First Amendment is.
Susan Estrich is a celebrated feminist legal scholar, the first female president of the Harvard Law Review, and the first woman to run a U.S. presidential campaign. She has written eight books.
