Last Saturday, President Trump was at a nationally televised college football game between the Tennessee Volunteers and the Texas Longhorns. More than 100,000 were there. But at one point he appeared to be more interested in his personal aide Natalie Harp and whatever she was showing him on her laptop.
Natalie Harp is the newest “weird” character in the MAGAverse — and the object of fascination and derision in the mainstream media, especially among the liberal commentariat.
Harp reportedly carries a bag full of Trump’s personal care items. Trump’s detractors have had great fun laughing at Natalie Harp’s letters of devotion, and the way she chases the president while he drives away in a golf cart. She was also reportedly with him on a secret flight out of Turkey while members of the cabinet and press pool served as human decoys to potentially be killed by an Iranian attack on Air Force One.
There has also been rampant speculation about the nature of their relationship. That is largely a private matter — except to the degree it could make him vulnerable to manipulation or otherwise imperil the country.
I have little interest in Natalie Harp the person, or in the political gossip and rumor-mongering surrounding Trump's King's Court.
But I do care about what Natalie Harp represents and the damage she and the other members of Trump’s King’s Court are doing to the American people and the country.
How does someone this close to Trump shape his thinking, his behavior, and what he does next? The deeper and more urgent story is not who Harp is but what she symbolizes and embodies.
Harp, his so-called “human printer,” matters because a central part of her job is showing Trump positive and fawning stories about himself in the media. She is like a fascist fairy keeping him cocooned in his own twisted world.
That type of forensic question has been largely avoided by the American media as an institution in the Age of Trump and the country’s collapse into fascism. The failure to consistently ask and answer that question, along with the sanewashing and other types of normalization, is a huge part of how the disaster that is the Age of Trump was born, why it has continued, and why it has gotten much worse so fast.
Trump truly believes that he is perfect, if not divine. He has shown little interest in changing his policies or behavior even as his polling numbers are collapsing to 20% in recent polls. Trump is — as one of his biographers told me — the main character and hero in his own story that he is writing in real time.
The late social psychologist Robert Jay Lifton had a term for the kind of reality that Trump inhabits. In a 2017 conversation with journalist Bill Moyers, Lifton described it as a “solipsistic reality”:
Solipsistic reality means that the only reality he’s capable of embracing has to do with his own self and the perception by and protection of his own self. And for a president to be so bound in this isolated solipsistic reality could not be more dangerous for the country and for the world. In that sense, he does what psychotics do. Psychotics engage in, or frequently engage in a view of reality based only on the self. He’s not psychotic, but I think ultimately this solipsistic reality will be the source of his removal from the presidency…
The American president has particular power. This makes Trump the most dangerous man in the world. He’s equally dangerous because of his finger on the nuclear trigger and because of his mind ensconced in solipsistic reality. The two are a dreadful combination.
Never forget that President Trump commands America’s nuclear arsenal and the power to destroy the world.
Consider what happened last week.
On Saturday, September 19, Trump suspended the White House press credentials of CNN, MS Now, and Politico. He says those outlets are “fake news” and unfair to him. In reality, Trump wants the news media to be his partners and agents in his propaganda machine.
The courts quickly intervened. Then on Thursday, a federal judge ordered the administration to temporarily restore CNN, MS Now, and Politico’s press credentials. The administration initially refused to allow the three outlets access to the White House, with some reporters even having their credentials confiscated. The news organizations returned to court, and the Trump administration finally complied.
But later the same day, despite the judge’s order, the administration again refused CNN and MS Now access to cover Chinese President Xi Jinping’s arrival at the White House for a state dinner.
Who helped trigger Trump’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico? Natalie Harp.
President Donald Trump’s close aide Natalie Harp showed him clips of media coverage last week before he banned Politico, CNN and MS NOW from the White House, people familiar with the matter said.
One source said a graphic from Politico was among the material that is believed to have infuriated the president and helped inform his decision to bar the three outlets from the White House grounds. The president also viewed clips from television, a second source said.
Trump’s pronouncement, which came after a string of setbacks in the courts and Congress, caught many advisers — including those who deal with the press on a daily basis — by surprise. Trump did not point to any particular story or tension point as the cause when asked about it later that day.
Trump is a master propagandist. He uses AI, his Truth Social platform and other tools to emotionally train and condition his MAGA followers — and the larger public — through disinformation, misinformation, and other authoritarian tools of distraction and chaos.
Trump’s AI-generated images also offer a remarkable window into his mind. He has repeatedly shared images depicting himself as some type of God or prophet like Jesus Christ, a time traveler, a mob boss, Hollywood heroes like Rocky and Superman, an evil Jedi from the Star Wars film universe, the commander of an army of AI-controlled killer robots, and himself pushing “the button” to destroy entire countries and the world with nuclear weapons.
Who is facilitating these AI-generated power fantasies? Natalie Harp.
Through his words, actions, and policies, Donald Trump has shown himself to be a racist, a bigot, and a nativist. Social scientists and other experts have shown that Trump’s skill as a “conflict entrepreneur” is central to his appeal and power over his followers and others who support him. He gives them permission to be their worst true selves by triggering and manipulating their feelings of white racial resentment, grievance, entitlement, and social dominance.
Who is helping Trump broadcast his hate and other antisocial values and beliefs on Truth Social and the rest of social media and the internet? Natalie Harp.
As New York Times reporters Shawn McCreesh and Maggie Haberman explain, this “sylphlike woman…supplies him with content she fishes out of the social media gutter (like the video he posted depicting the Obamas as apes) and provides him with a view from the world outside official Washington, of which he has always been mistrustful.” [my emphasis]
Despite his collapsing public support, Trump continues to command almost total loyalty from his base. A July 2026 Pew survey found that 89% of the most consistently Republican and conservative respondents approved of his performance. An August UMass/Amherst poll found that 96% of the most enthusiastic MAGA supporters would vote for him again.
There is a word for this: a cult. Harp embodies it.
She apparently believes that Trump is a kind of personal savior who helped to heal her bone cancer.
In letters obtained by The Daily Beast, Harp told Trump, “I never want to bring you anything but joy. I’m sorry I lost my focus. You are all that matters to me. I don’t want to ever let you down. Thank you for being my Guardian and Protector in this Life”
She also appears to believe that she is “unworthy”:
"To modify a classic, 'I could not have parted with you, to anyone less worthy' — And, I will add, it is I who is unworthy.”
Harp supplies Trump with narcissistic fuel, is attuned to his emotional needs, and appears to be psychologically bonded to him. New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman has said that Harp’s behavior is so unusual that the Secret Service shared their concerns with senior White House personnel about her close relationship with Trump.
Natalie Harp’s devotion, and apparent love of Donald Trump, represents a much broader phenomenon: the extraordinary emotional and psychological attachment that Trump’s most diehard followers have to him and to the MAGA movement.
MAGA is not simply a political movement — it’s a political-religious movement.
After the attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 66% of Republicans believed that God intervened to save him.
Trump’s rallies closely resemble charismatic Christian religious tent revivals mixed with a circus or festival, where he is preaching and his most devoted followers are brought to a type of ecstasy or other transcendent experience. Many of his MAGA diehards appear to feel most alive when they are in the presence of Donald Trump.
For those — especially the mainstream media and political class — who live outside of the MAGAverse and TrumpWorld, this all sounds so ridiculous and funny.
In reality, none of this is funny.
As Chris Hedges warned in a recent essay:
The buffoons who orchestrate fascism, with its quack science, idiocy, penchant for violence and grotesque hypermasculinity, are ripe for satire…. But this form of satire blinds opponents to its destructive power and murderous core. It ignores the real centers of power. It does not engender resistance.
Here is a warning from history.
At the end of World War II, Germany was in ruins. Hitler's thousand-year Reich lasted twelve years. The Allies destroyed it in six.
Yet, as Henrik Eberle documents in Letters to Hitler, some Germans remained intensely loyal to Hitler even as their country was losing the war — and some continued to send him love letters.
One woman wrote to Hitler:
“Sweetest love, favorite of my heart, my one and only, my dearest, my truest and hottest beloved…. I could kiss you a thousand times and still not be satisfied. My love for you is endless, so tender, so hot and so complete."
In a February 27, 1945, letter reproduced in Letters to Hitler, Friede Nögler expressed her encouragement and belief in a final victory.
“Wherever I encounter people who are weak, I give them something of my own strength of faith, so that they too may become strong and confident. The results are still small, but I know that I shall continue to encounter souls here who are weak in their faith, and I shall encourage and strengthen them in the confident belief you have taught us—the belief in Final Victory, which is closer than we ourselves realize. May God help me in this!”
Hitler would commit suicide two months later.
America in 2026 is not Germany in 1945. But the echoes are becoming much harder to ignore.
People often laugh when they are terrified.
Much of the laughter aimed at Trump, his King’s Court, and the MAGA movement, I suspect, is born of terror and not humor, and not happiness.
Chauncey DeVega is a politics and opinion writer whose work focuses on American democracy, inequality, political power, and the enduring significance of race in American society and the wider world. He was formerly a senior politics writer at Salon. His essays and commentary have been cited by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC, NPR, The Atlantic, and other leading publications. He hosts two podcasts: The Chauncey DeVega Show and The Truth Report.
