'Desperate' Aide Natalie Harp Secretly Slept in Golf Club Locker Room for Months to 'Stay Close' to Trump

Natalie Harp, one of Donald Trump's most constant aides, spent a summer sleeping in the women's locker room of his New Jersey golf club so she could remain within reach of the president at all hours, according to journalist Michael Wolff.

The claim, first published in Wolff's book on Trump's return to power, has recirculated this week alongside fresh reporting on Harp's unusual role and the wariness she has provoked inside Trump's inner circle.

Harp, 35, is a former conservative broadcaster who joined Trump's operation in 2022 and now serves as an executive assistant, rarely leaving his side on domestic or foreign trips. Accounts of her devotion have circulated for more than a year, but the locker-room episode has drawn fresh attention as new excerpts and profiles examine how a low-level aide became a fixture around the president.

The Locker-Room Episode Wolff Describes

The account dates to the summer of 2023, when Trump moved his campaign operation to his Bedminster golf club. According to Wolff, Trump's staff deliberately declined to assign Harp housing at the club as part of an effort to manage what was known internally as 'the Natalie situation'.

She found a way to stay anyway. Wolff writes that Harp contacted the club's grounds staff and secured a maid's room, and that when that proved 'too far from the main house to respond quickly enough to Trump's calls, she relocated herself to the much closer women's locker room, where, with undiminished proximity to Trump, she would spend the summer'.

The persistence, by Wolff's telling, did not irritate Trump so much as impress him. He writes that the president found her doggedness amusing, even as others around him grew uneasy, and that efforts to reduce her access repeatedly failed.

The Cut and Australian outlet the Sydney Morning Herald both revisited the episode this week in wider examinations of Harp's standing.

Who Natalie Harp Is and What She Does

Harp's job description has never fully explained her prominence. A former host on the right-wing One America News network, she joined Trump's team in 2022 and began accompanying him on his near-daily golf outings, later becoming what the Sydney Morning Herald described as a near-permanent shadow at his side.

Colleagues have nicknamed her the 'human printer' for her habit of handing Trump printouts of favourable news and social-media posts, often on the spot.

A report in May shared that she has at times managed his Truth Social account, and Wolff describes her as the keeper of what he calls the 'Truth phone', effectively in charge of the president's posts, as well as a conduit for lawmakers and others seeking to reach him.

Her proximity has occasionally placed her in sensitive moments. Harp was reported to be among the small group of staff moved onto a plane with Trump after a credible threat at the NATO leaders' summit in Turkey earlier this year, while several cabinet members travelled on a separate aircraft. She has held the executive-assistant role since January 2025.

The Unease Inside Trump's Circle

Harp's intensity has unsettled others around the president for years. According to 'Regime Change', a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, she left a series of adoring letters in Trump's personal spaces, one reportedly reading 'you are all that matters to me', prompting alarm among senior staff including chief of staff Susie Wiles.

The concern has at times extended to the president's security. Earlier reporting on Wolff's book recounted that Secret Service agents had once deemed Harp a potential danger to herself and to Trump, citing the strangeness of her behaviour and the letters they had obtained.

Those around Trump quoted by Wolff have described the relationship as devotional rather than romantic, with one aide calling it 'a Christian devotional relationship', and Wolff reports that no one in the Trump camp suspects a sexual relationship.

The renewed attention comes as Harp remains a visible presence beside the president, including on a recent weekend at Bedminster.

Her defenders say she provides genuine help to the operation, and much of the most striking material about her originates with authors whose accounts the White House has previously dismissed, leaving the fullest picture of 'the Natalie situation' dependent on how much weight readers give to their reporting.