Natalie Harp, Donald Trump’s 35-year-old executive assistant, wrote her boss an apology in 2023 for what she called an embarrassment on a golf course. This week the images surfaced showing exactly what she meant.
They aren’t subtle. It’s practically the visual version of previous accounts about her attempts to stay close to him.
This time, the setting is Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire, Scotland, on May 2, 2023. The first day of a trip Trump took while out of office. The resort’s white lighthouse sits in the background.
In the wide shot, a caravan of golf carts moves along a paved path. Trump rides in the front one in a red cap, another man beside him. Behind him are a line of carts carrying staff and security. Several people are walking alongside.
Then there’s the second frame. Harp is alone on the path behind the last cart, mid-stride, running. Both feet off the ground. She’s in dark athletic pants and a light jacket, arms pumping, and she is going uphill.
The carts aren’t stopping either. Nobody in them is looking back.
She was 45 years younger than the man in the lead cart, and she was chasing him on foot across a golf course so she could supposedly hand him printouts.
View on Threads
The New York Times published portions of Harp’s correspondence with Trump on Aug. 18. Meanwhile, the Daily Beast obtained the full letter from biographer Michael Wolff and published it Thursday, Aug. 20.
It opens with an apology for contacting him after her car got turned away at the airport. Then it reaches Scotland.
“I am also sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland,” Harp wrote. She explained she’d been told there were no carts and that people walked, so she walked. On day two, a course official specifically asked her to keep walking. She also further told to tell any other women heading out to do the same, to spare the course more carts.
“If there is anything else I have done to cause you trouble, please forgive me,” she added, per The Independent. She was apologizing for following instructions.
Other letters in the batch include, “You are all that matters to me” and “I don’t ever want to let you down…I want to bring you joy.” One closes: “With all my heart, Natalie.”
Harp has been on Trump’s’ team since 2019, when her cancer survival story caught his attention and earned her a speaking slot at the 2020 Republican National Convention. A former anchor with the far-right One America News Network, she’s now his executive assistant and travels with him nearly everywhere.
Staff call her the “human printer.” She carries a portable printer and battery pack to hand him hard copies of flattering coverage and favorable polling all day, filtering what reaches him.
The devotion has produced a month of stories, including the SUV trunk incident and the media’s finding that Trump wasn’t the first president she’d fixated on.
The Threads post became a talking point, and most commenters looked past Harp entirely.
“What is her problem 😭” one user wrote.
Others tried to make sense of the scene. “Looks like he’s trying to escape from Driving Ms. Crazy!” one commenter joked. “Omg! Is this real????” Another asked.
Then there was the reply that got at the part nobody could explain. “He probably made everyone pay for their own carts. She didn’t have the cash,” one user wrote. “Of course seeing that no one said ‘Natalie, hop on the back’ is telling.”
Eric Trump rushed to defend Harp this week, saying a CNN segment about her was “absolute trash.” He wrote that she’s “deeply committed to my father,” which some read as confirming the premise rather than denying it.
A day earlier, Melania had ended a 32-day absence with a Rose Garden appearance and a five-word opener: “I heard you missed me,” which some perceived as slight shade amid the growing talk about Trump and Harp these past few weeks.
Social media users also noticed Trump and Melania looking distant during their first public outing in a month, which Trump seemingly leaving without his wife in sight.
