Donald Trump made sure he brought his favorite White House aide with him when he escaped from Air Force One to travel in a decoy jet via a catering truck.
Natalie Harp, 35, is never far from the 80-year-old president, and it has emerged that the young blonde aide was among a select group of Trump’s inner circle he took with him as he fled a NATO summit on a military flight because of a credible Iranian assassination threat.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, and Walt Nauta, the director of Oval Office operations, also joined Trump inside the catering truck to move to the decoy plane, The Washington Post reported.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boarded the Air Force 32-A via its staircase “in a manner that made him look like the senior-most official aboard the flight,” the Post reported.
Other top officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, top White House aide Stephen Miller and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, remained on Air Force One after Trump was made aware of the potential Iranian assassination threat.
As noted by The Post, those who accompanied Trump as he hid in a catering truck to the Air Force C-32A worked with him at his Mar-a-Lago home in between his two presidencies, even after he faced two impeachments and multiple criminal investigations.
Nauta, Trump’s former valet driver, was one of Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case after being accused of obstructing federal efforts to retrieve sensitive materials from Mar-a-Lago.
Trump also made sure to bring Harp with him, who has remained a constant in the president’s life for years. Harp’s obsession with the president became so severe that she was even flagged by the Secret Service as a potential security risk, author Michael Wolff revealed in his book All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America.
According to Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, the new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Harp would leave gushing letters for Trump to find in his “personal spaces” during the 2024 campaign, including one that read: “You are all that matters to me.”
The string of love letters reportedly alarmed future White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who asked herself, “Where am I?”
Harp has also earned herself the nickname the “human printer” as her role involves constantly following Trump around with a portable device to print off emails, news articles and social media posts, so the 80-year-old president does not have to read them on a screen.
Journalists who were traveling with the Trump administration as it departed Ankara, Turkey, last month were not made aware of the potential threat to Air Force One. It remains unclear whether the remaining top administration officials involved were aware they were flying on a different plane than the president.
On Tuesday night, Trump offered a weak excuse as to why he considered Air Force One too dangerous to travel on, but not his top officials or the press corps.
“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk, because that would be the plane that they would be more likely to go for,” Trump said.
Preston Harp, the estranged brother of the 80-year-old president’s favorite personal assistant, previously told the Daily Beast that his sister’s obsession with Trump can be traced back to her troubled relationship with their late father.
“The way my sister interacted with and treated my dad throughout the years, it was like she wished she had a different dad,” he said. “I think that she does see Trump as a kind of father figure.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
