'Too Old, Too Feeble': Serious Competency Questions Raised After Leak Exposes Trump's Extreme Vulnerability

Donald Trump's fitness for office is facing fresh scrutiny in Washington after a former senior Republican operative claimed the 78-year-old president is now 'too mentally feeble' to do the job and is being heavily influenced by a 'crazy, stalker‑ish' aide inside the West Wing.

Cheri Jacobus, a former Republican National Committee spokesperson who later became a prominent Trump critic, used her Tuesday YouTube show, to allege that executive assistant Natalie Harp has effectively become a gatekeeper for what the president sees, thinks and ultimately posts online. Harp, 34, has worked for Trump since 2022 and stepped into the powerful executive assistant role when he returned to the White House in January 2025.

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Harp's influence first surfaced in mainstream reporting earlier this year detailed how she combs through right‑wing media and social platforms, assembles material she believes will appeal to Trump and then posts it to his Truth Social account late at night, often without traditional staff vetting. The paper reported that Harp compiles content for Trump's approval and then logs in to his account herself to publish it.

Jacobus seized on that reporting, arguing it reveals something more troubling than an over‑eager assistant. In her broadcast, she described Harp as having 'unnerved her colleagues' by leaving Trump handwritten notes with declarations such as 'You are all that matters to me,' a phrase also cited in Regime Change, a recent book on the Trump presidency by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

'They've raised alarms about her feeding the president unhinged online content and being the driving force behind his bizarre Truth Social posts,' Jacobus said, accusing Harp of both shaping the president's worldview and pressing the buttons that send it out to millions.

The core of Jacobus's case is not simply that Trump is listening to an unusually devoted aide. It is that, in her view, he is now so susceptible to flattery and fringe material that Harp's role crosses the line into undue influence.

'What's bizarre and disturbing is that he is so vulnerable to this sort of undue influence,' she said. 'This is somebody who should not be in office he is too old and too mentally feeble.'

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Trump's inner circle has always revolved around fiercely loyal figures prepared to tell him what he wants to hear, from campaign advisers to favoured media personalities. But Jacobus portrays Harp as an outlier even by Trump‑world standards, casting her as a singular presence in the building who has spooked some of her colleagues.

'She's got this devotion to Trump that's just disturbing. Very, very disturbing. And other staff at the White House are concerned,' Jacobus claimed, adding with pointed sarcasm: 'And you know how disturbing the other staff at the Trump White House are so if they're disturbed and concerned about this, my God, that's pretty bad.'

The suggestion that a mid‑level aide could be steering a sitting president's late‑night missives will not surprise anyone who has watched Trump's Truth Social output lurch from grievance to conspiracy theory. What Jacobus adds is an insider's accusation that the person curating that stream is both unusually fixated on Trump and, in her view, unchecked.

Trump's closeness to Harp is not solely Jacobus's characterisation. Haberman and Swan's Regime Change chronicles Harp leaving the president those adoring notes and spending long stretches by his side. Their reporting does not endorse Jacobus's description of Harp as a 'danger', but it does back up the basic outline of an aide whose personal devotion is part of her working relationship with the president.

In her monologue, Jacobus did not pretend to have a solution. 'All right, this woman is a danger. Very concerning. I don't know what we do about it,' she said, before turning her fire on Republicans in Congress and Trump's own allies for what she sees as willful inaction.

'Republicans in Congress won't do anything about it. Susie Wiles isn't doing anything about it. We know Trump's kids don't care about him... Certainly, Melania isn't,' she said, painting a picture of a family and party either unwilling or unable to intervene.

Her conclusion is stark. 'So it looks like this crazy, stalker‑ish person, this Natalie Harp, is the one who makes the decisions in this White House. Think about that. It's frightening,' Jacobus warned.

None of Jacobus's more incendiary claims about Trump's cognitive state or Harp's precise level of authority have been independently confirmed, and both the White House and Harp herself have so far declined to publicly address them. Apart from the Journal's account of her role in curating online content and the Haberman–Swan reporting on her personal notes to the president, much of what Jacobus alleges rests on her own assessment and unnamed staff concerns.

Still, the questions she is raising land in a sensitive place for Trump. His opponents have already been hammering his age and impulse control, and his supporters insist he remains vigorous and fully in charge. The idea that a 34‑year‑old aide with a professed emotional fixation might be shaping not just the tone of his late‑night posts but the inputs that guide his decisions will only deepen that divide.

The situation sits in a hazy space between documented influence and contested interpretation. Until Trump's team is willing to detail who has access to his accounts, what is being filtered before it reaches his desk, and how decisions are actually being made, Jacobus's portrayal will remain part warning, part unanswered question about who is really steering the modern presidency.