natalie

WASHINGTON — President Trump gave sizable holiday gifts to four White House aides, according to new financial disclosures released by the administration.

The gifts of $45,000 each to executive assistant Natalie Harp, communications advisor Margo Martin, and deputy director of Oval Office operations Chamberlain Harris as well as a $20,000 gift for director of Oval Office operations Walt Nauta were noted in the staffers’ annual financial disclosure forms that were published by the administration last week. Harp, Martin and Harris make $150,000 annually and Nauta is paid $175,000 a year, according to the White House’s salary disclosure report to Congress.

A White House official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Trump “has a long-standing practice of giving Christmas gifts to people in his orbit, including at times employees and aides, both in government and in his time in the private sector.”

The official did not say if any other staffers were given similar gifts from the president but added that the cash gifts were not related to the “individuals’ official government duties, and therefore are entirely permissible under relevant legal and ethical standards.”

The disclosures of the gifts were first reported earlier on Tuesday by the Washington Post.

Harp is a constant presence by Trump’s side and is known for carrying a portable printer with her so she can print out favorable media coverage and social media posts for the president, who prefers reading important information on paper rather than on a screen.

Martin has been working for Trump since his first go-around in the White House. She started in the first term as a White House press assistant and followed the president to Palm Beach, Fla., to help run his media operations after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. She returned to the White House with Trump after his 2024 victory.

Earlier this year, Trump appointed Harris to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which has oversight over the president’s White House ballroom project.

Nauta, who previously served as a valet to Trump, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira were charged in 2023 with conspiring with Trump to obstruct an FBI investigation into classified documents that the Republican took with him when he left the White House after his first term.

The charges were dismissed in 2024.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Natalie Harp has never been in the spotlight quite like this.

Before the 35-year-old White House aide made headlines for her close access to President Trump, much of her early life was spent in Southern California, where she was home-schooled and attended a mega-church on Sundays — a quiet upbringing that, her brother says, was defined by conservative values and Christian teachings.

Their mother taught them at home using educational materials written from a biblical worldview. The family would attend services regularly at Shadow Mountain Church in El Cajon, where pastors would deliver sermons like the one from a recent Sunday, calling on God to use its thousands of congregants “in a way that turns this world upside down.”

“We were raised with the idea that America was God’s gift to the world and it’s the only place that people really live in freedom,” Preston Harp, her brother, told The Times.

Years later, in 2019, Harp’s ascent into Trump’s orbit began, when she went on Fox News to credit a healthcare bill Trump signed into law with saving her from a rare form of cancer — a story that later caught the president’s attention.

As that relationship took hold, the California family bubble she’d been raised in was bursting behind the scenes, culminating with her father’s suicide in July 2020. A month later, Harp emerged on the national stage, introducing herself as a “formerly forgotten American from California” at the Republican National Convention, where she declared her devotion to Trump.

“I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you,” she said.

Natalie Harp speaks after being called onstage by President Trump during the Faith & Freedom Coalition 2019 Road To Majority Policy Conference in Washington on June 26, 2019.

(Mark Wilson / Getty Images)

Now, she spends her days working as a special assistant to Trump, a man she has described, in highly personal letters, as her “guardian and protector.” In those letters, published by the Daily Beast, she has thanked the president for “always being there” for her and alluded to a “promise” Trump made to her after she lost her dad.

Harp’s taxpayer-funded job, with its unmatched access to the president, mostly happens away from the public eye. She has been called the “human printer” because she follows Trump with a portable printer to provide Trump with hard copies of flattering news coverage or information the computer-averse president requires.

She also stays up late drafting social media posts with the president, the New York Times reported. Several of Trump’s Truth Social posts have generated controversy in recent months, including an AI-generated image showing him as Jesus in a white robe laying his hands on a sick man.

Those who know her describe her as detail-oriented and a “devoted staffer to the cause” whose tight-knit circle includes those closest to Trump, such as Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, and Karoline Leavitt, the White House’s former press secretary.

“Just like many of the administration officials, you become friends with your co-workers,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who talks to Harp on a weekly basis, said in an interview.

Harp is “almost always” with Wiles, Luna said. The congresswoman added that her relationship with the president is “100% professional,” and that any suggestion otherwise is an attempt to smear her.

“She’s been nothing but professional and an absolute killer when it comes to getting her job done,” Luna said. “I would kill to have someone like her on my team.”

To her brother, Harp’s integration in Trump’s inner circle is in line with her upbringing.

“My mom raised us as super conservative, and he’s everything that she taught us to respect,” he said.

The White House declined to comment.

A California native in Trump world

As a kid in the San Diego neighborhood of Carmel Valley, Harp played with old-fashioned dolls and spent a lot of time reading, her brother said. For school, their mother used a curriculum from Bob Jones University Press, whose material focused on “biblical worldview shaping,” according to its website.

The home in which Natalie Harp, an aide to President Trump, grew up in the Carmel Valley neighborhood of San Diego.

(Sandy Huffaker / For The Times)

“We start with God’s truth as the standard,” the website states. “Scripture serves as the blueprint for how we put together our textbooks so that every lesson begins with truth.”

Growing up, Harp spent most of her time with adults, especially her mother, and would rarely socialize with her peers, her brother recalled. Even at church, she would opt to sit with the adults instead of spending time with the youth group.

“There would be like skateboarding demos, there would be cool stuff going on, but my sister was just with all the grown-ups, and she preferred it,” he said.

Harp and her brother were close as young children but drifted apart as they got older. Preston Harp found an outlet skateboarding and surfing with friends, and Harp opted to stay close to home, he said.

At some point, their mother began policing their discussions, particularly as he started espousing more progressive beliefs, her brother recalled.

“I wasn’t really allowed to be in her life,” he said. “If we ever talked on the phone my mom was listening to everything we’d say, and they were talking on the phone together with me on speakerphone.”

Harp declined to comment for this story through a request sent to the White House. Her mother did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.

An aerial view of Natalie Harp’s family’s home in the private gated community of Woodbridge Cove, in Irvine.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In her mid-20s, Harp moved with her parents to Irvine to be closer to their father’s work at Biola University, a private Christian institution in La Mirada, southeast of Los Angeles. He worked as a professor at the school of business and later served as the executive director of the Office of Innovation, according to the university.

The family lived in a home adjacent to a man-made lake in Irvine’s Woodbridge neighborhood, a master-planned community known for its peaceful, family-friendly atmosphere.

Both Irvine and Carmel Valley are silos from the problems of the outside world, places where everything might seem perfect, even when it isn’t, her brother said.

“My mom likes living in bubbles,” he said.

Within a few years of the family’s move, in July 2020, Harp’s father, 61, died by suicide at their home. When Preston Harp arrived at the house, he said his mother wanted him to go along with the story that their father had died in his sleep. Preston refused, he said, not wanting to downplay his dad’s pain to keep up appearances. It was the start of a massive rift in the family.

“That was the last time I ever talked to my sister,” he said.

Entering the national stage

Harp has shared little about her upbringing publicly. However, she has spoken at length about medical issues she experienced starting in her mid-20s.

In 2020, she said during remarks at the Republican National Convention that five years earlier she was “the victim of a notoriously deadly medical error.”

“I survived, but only to be diagnosed with a rare and terminal bone cancer,” she said.

She said she was diagnosed with Stage 2 bone cancer. It was that experience that sparked her interest in entering the political arena.

“I just wanted to get better,” she said on the program. “I started tuning in for the first time into politics because I had never had a representative before. All my representatives were Democrats, so I thought, why should I care about politics?”

Two rounds of chemotherapy did not help and she was rejected from clinical trials, she said. But in 2018 Trump signed the Right to Try Act, which allows terminally ill patients to access certain experimental drugs and immunotherapy treatments that have not received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

“I am not dying from cancer anymore thanks to President Trump, I am living with cancer,” Harp said on the program.

The White House did not respond to a request seeking comment on the treatment she received.

Natalie Harp follows former President Trump as he boards his airplane after speaking at an event in Manchester, N.H., on April 27, 2023.

(Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

During Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, Harp’s role was to talk about the Right to Try Act, said Sarah Matthews, a former deputy press secretary for Trump.

“I remember we would correspond over Twitter DMs, and she just seemed very excited to be helpful in any way,” Matthews said. At the time, it seemed Harp was trying to make inroads with staffers, she said.

“My role would not necessarily interact with her, but … I could tell that she was trying to initiate a connection,” she said.

Although it’s not clear who on the team found Harp, Matthews said she was “very eager” to help the campaign.

“They found this woman who was eloquent and well-spoken and all the things, but it did just come off to me like she really wanted to be part of Trump world,” Matthews said.

In intimate letters, Harp has explained her devotion to the 80-year-old president.

Natalie Harp listens as former President Trump speaks outside the courtroom during his trial on charges of covering up hush money payments, on April 30, 2024 in New York City.

(Curtis Means / Pool Photo)

In one letter, she writes that she is “unworthy” of Trump and reminisces about the times Trump called during her “Talkshow days,” a reference to her stint in 2021 hosting “The Real Story with Natalie Harp” on the right-wing One America News channel.

“We’d talk about everything and nothing,” she writes. “I want to get back to that synergy. We shouldn’t have to talk about work all the time!!”

She adds: “I always felt like an in-betweener, somewhere between Staff and those you enjoy talking to on the Plane or at Dinner, because that’s who I used to be to you when I was a ‘Talkshow Host’ (as much as I hated that actual job!)”

Ossoff’s ‘Natalie’ reference brings attention

The public attention on Harp sharpened this month when Jon Ossoff, a Democratic senator from Georgia, told supporters in Atlanta that Trump wanted to “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie” rather than do the work of the presidency. The remarks came after it became public that Harp had been one of a select few who joined Trump on an alternate plane flying out of Turkey as a precaution amid a threat of attack by Iran.

President Trump and Natalie Harp, right, attend a dignified transfer for service members killed during operations in the Middle East, at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Del., on July 22.

(Lau Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)

Ossoff’s comment drew the ire of Trump allies, from Capitol Hill lawmakers to conservative influencers, with many of them blasting the comment as sexist and inappropriate.

Although the White House and Trump allies have fiercely defended Harp in public forums, and dismissed suggestions of an improper relationship, Trump has sidestepped questions about his aide.

“People can be very mean to successful, pretty women,” Luna said. “And that is what is happening to Natalie.”

In their book “Regime Change,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan write that Trump has told staff that Harp is the only one who loves him as much as his wife and kids.

“All of you will go off and make money,” Trump would say. “She’ll never leave me.”

Although Trump worked closely with other executive assistants during his first administration, Matthews said his relationship with Harp appears to be “a different level of closeness.”

President Trump,right, accompanied by Tiffany Trump’s husband, Michael Boulos, left, and aide Natalie Harp, center, looks out the window of Marine One as it lands on the South Lawn of the White House on Sept. 18, 2025.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

“I think it’s because of the way she fawns all over him and the love notes,” she said. “I think he just really trusts her. So she’s been able to, I think, develop an even closer bond.”

Despite the recent controversy, Harp remained by the president’s side during public appearances last week.

At the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington on Aug. 23, Harp sat a few rows behind Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, chatting with the president’s son Eric. Days before that, she reportedly traveled with Trump to South Carolina for a campaign rally and to his northern Virginia golf club.

“She’s just all work,” Luna said. “She is one of the hardest workers and it is hard to find people who are like that.”

Natalie Harp looks on as President Trump visits the Mission Control Center at NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday.

(Kent Nishimura / AFP via Getty Images)

Ceballos reported from Washington, Fry from Irvine.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, seek help from a professional or call 988. The nationwide three-digit mental health crisis hotline will connect callers with trained mental health counselors. Or text “HOME” to 741741 in the U.S. and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line.

Rachel Cusk is not a people pleaser. The prolific, award-winning British author’s novels are often plotless, discursive and frustratingly obtuse. Yet Cusk has found a large fan base for her work, mainly because she is a deft excavator of the human psyche, a writer who can articulate emotional states with uncanny precision and insight.

On a formal level, Cusk’s new book, “Life Of M,” closely adheres to the rigorously calibrated approach that has been so successful for her across 11 novels. In classic Cusk fashion, “Life of M” unfolds from the inside out. It is resolutely internal and hermetic, told from the point of view of a highly observant and self-conscious narrator. When Cusk writes that a character’s smile “had a sweetness that almost seemed to reproach those who looked at it for their dim and suspicious view of life,” it’s that “almost” which saves the line from sinking of its own weight, one of Cusk’s nuanced brushstrokes that give her prose lift and bounce.

“Life of M” is a two-hander. The primary driver of the narrative is an unnamed writer who has approached a famous actor — the M of the title — with the proposition of ghosting her autobiography. This is the extent of Cusk’s setup. The novel is about as stark and stripped of biographical details as a Samuel Beckett story. Cusk is far more interested in how the writer’s identity is unmoored by the actor, and how the world bends to M’s will and thus changes its shape in her presence: “Standing in the street, I realized that I could not be myself around M. She was friendly, generous, disarmingly modest, yet everything I did or said in her company was false. It was as if I was acting, while M came across as authentic and real.”

Author Rachel Cusk

(Siemon Scamell-Katz)

Interspersed between these scenes are chapters that shift time and tone. They appear at first to be the writer’s own story, reflections on the past and life apart from M; the “we” in these sections might be referring to siblings or partners. But they are too strange to be memoiristic: “In the evening we flower; like strange nocturnal plants we put out our display.” Then: “Even if we spend the evening at home this feeling of integration, or our interior and our exterior fusing together, occurs.” Are we in M’s head? Is the collective pronoun meant to be a proxy for her private and public selves? These sections are the least effective parts of Cusk’s book, as they are frustratingly indeterminate and hazy.

As the writer and the actor spend time together, and the narrator tries to pry open some small window into M’s psyche, the process of gathering material is constantly being thwarted by M’s casual instructability. It seems M has perfected the art of using candor as a carapace, so that the image of her authentic self recedes the more Cusk’s writer spends time with her. M is not governed by the usual impulses of the civilian; she has no use for love or hate, desire or abnegation. “Acting involved pretending to be other people, whose own emotional states —such as she understood them — could preoccupy her for a time,” writes Cusk. “Once they were completed, she was as locked out of these recordings as the millions of other eyes that watched them.”

M and the writer move through highly mediated spaces that amplify certain features and downgrade others, a kind of edited, hyperreal landscape. M researches a part in a mansion that has been meticulously art-directed to resemble the house of a family who in fact never lived there. Cusk describes these spaces in great detail, as if they were fetish objects. The mansion’s interior is “not heavy or dark,” she writes, “rather it is light and mellow and the panels have finely carved patterns around their edges.” It is the seduction of surfaces Cusk is exploring here, the ways we are taken in by so much that is chimerical: lavish interiors, actors, our own doubled selves.

Cusk has previously explored this gap between truth and signifiers of truth in her “Outline” trilogy. But “Life of M” feels different, perhaps because the world feels far different than it did eight years ago, when “Kudos,” the last book in the trilogy, was published. Now that we have fallen straight through the looking glass of the internet, that gap has narrowed to the extent that we are having far greater difficulty discerning reality from its uncanny simulations. Sadly, we are complicit in this occluding of authentic experience. Millions of us toggle so frequently between our real lives and the well-curated fantasyland of our social media personas that it’s scrambled our neural pathways. We are living the double consciousness of public figures no less readily than a celebrity like M. The notion of a “complete inversion of internal and external that fame brings about” is no longer exclusive to the famous.

According to internet gossip, Cusk’s M is in fact a shadow portrait of Natalie Portman. And there are strong hints in the text that indicate this might be the case. But to think of this novel solely as a journey to the center of Portman’s mind is not only irrelevant; it cheapens Cusk’s project. What the novelist is getting at here resonates far beyond a single celebrity. This is a short, potent book that has much to say about the spiritual rot of our present culture.

Weingarten is the author of “Thirsty: William Mulholland, California Water and the Real Chinatown.”