Dem Heavyweight Warns of ‘Deadly Serious’ Issue With Natalie Harp

Politics admin August 20, 2026 0 Comments

Dem Heavyweight Warns of ‘Deadly Serious’ Issue With Natalie Harp

A top Democratic strategist has sounded the alarm on a “deadly serious” problem with President Donald Trump’s ever-present aide.

David Axelrod, a senior Obama administration adviser, expressed concern about Trump’s adoring aide after MS NOW reported that she worked at the White House without security clearance for a year.

“Now THIS is a different matter,” Axelrod wrote in an X post on Thursday. “If this story is true, and the person closest to the @POTUS and his thinking on a daily basis has no security clearance and refuses to submit to the process of getting it, it’s a deadly serious issue.”

Two sources told MS NOW that Harp declined multiple times over more than a year—for unknown reasons—to seek security clearance required to work at the White House.

As concerns over Harp’s lack of security clearance mounted in the White House counsel’s office and among security officials, Trump stepped in to personally intervene, according to the outlet. In recent months, Harp sorted out her paperwork and received the clearance, the sources said.

A senior White House official said Harp received multiple extensions to conduct the lengthy process of filling out the paperwork. In the meantime, there were “subtle moves” to limit her 24/7 access to Trump, another source said, but those efforts ultimately failed to rein her in.

“She is just persistent and not realizing that’s what they were trying to do,” the source said.

When reached for comment on this story, the White House issued a brief defense of Harp, who holds the titles special assistant to the president and executive assistant to the president.

“Natalie Harp has a security clearance like everyone else, and she is a loyal and hardworking member of President Trump’s team,” outgoing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Harp, a onetime anchor and host for the right-wing news network One America News, earned the moniker “human printer” by following Trump around, fulfilling his every request, including fetching merchandise, performing Google searches, printing stories from right-wing websites, and suggesting possible Truth Social posts.

She was thrust into the spotlight after Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff namedropped her in his remarks at a campaign rally.

“He doesn’t want to do the job,” Ossoff said of Trump. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.”

Axelrod was among Democrats who took issue with Ossoff calling out Harp.

“No one has been more consistently eloquent or incisive in exposing @realDonaldTrump than @Ossoff,” he wrote in an X post on Wednesday.

“The paragraph from his weekend speech that has gotten so much attention was a brutal takedown. But two words in it, ‘with Natalie’ seemed gratuitous and unnecessary,” he added. “They juiced the virality of it, I’m sure. Probably thrilled some in the base, who figured it was just giving Trump a taste of his own nasty medicine. But they distracted and detracted from the power of the message.”