While most White House aides keep a professional distance from the president, Natalie Harp has built a career out of doing the opposite. She prints Trump’s emails, articles and social media posts on paper so he doesn’t have to look at a screen, leaves notes in his personal spaces calling him her “Guardian and Protector in this Life” and follows him onto Air Force One in designer dresses and heels. Trump calls her “sweetie.”
This week, her estranged brother called the whole arrangement “very unhealthy” from a $60 a month room in Nicaragua.
For Preston Harp, the story came as a surprise.
The 38-year-old said he had no idea his sister was working for the president until a friend sent him a Daily Mail article in 2023. It is not how most people expect to discover a sibling has landed a senior White House job.
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“He’s like, ‘Hey, did you see the Daily Mail?’ And I’m like, ‘No, look at this,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, my sister’s in the Daily Mail, and working for Trump!'” he told the outlet. “And I had no idea. And so it just kind of caused some cognitive dissonance. I don’t understand why my sister, or anyone could want to work for Trump.”
He called Trump “a national embarrassment,” described his sister’s relationship with the president as “very unhealthy” before adding: “She’s just like his fan club.”
The siblings now live worlds apart in more ways than one.
While Natalie flies around the globe aboard Air Force One, Preston lives in Managua wearing T shirts and baseball caps, working alongside an 85-year-old activist who lost both legs protesting US arms shipments to Central America in 1987.
Earlier this year, he broke his kneecap after tripping over a bicycle tire in the dark and says Nicaragua’s free healthcare covered his treatment. He has no plans to return to the United States and says he is content watching it from a comfortable distance.
The family break stretches back several years.
Preston says he and Natalie became estranged after the death of their father Robert in 2020 because of how she and their mother handled the circumstances surrounding his passing. Since then, the family has drifted even farther apart.
Their paternal grandmother Dolores, now 88, told the Daily Mail: “Natalie doesn’t call me. I’ve accepted that’s the way it is.” A cousin said she has been blocked on social media. After Robert’s death, Natalie moved with her mother to West Palm Beach, settling about three miles from Mar a Lago.
That relationship has now been examined by two separate authors.
Michael Wolff’s All or Nothing says the Secret Service viewed Harp as a “potential danger” to Trump because of the “aggressiveness” of her attention. Haberman and Swan’s Regime Change reports that before joining the White House staff, Harp left handwritten letters in Trump’s “personal spaces,” including one that read: “You are all that matters to me.”
According to the book, Susie Wiles reportedly came across the notes and wondered, “Where am I?” Early in the second term, Trump also reassured staffers that Harp was not going anywhere.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
