General Discussion

Even the president’s inner circle is tiring of his erratic, late-night social media binges—and the White House aide responsible for them.

Donald Trump’s executive assistant Natalie Harp is the woman behind his overnight Truth Social sprees, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Through twilight-hour shifts, Harp has created the impression that the president never sleeps and is instead spending his should-be bedtime obsessively retweeting baseless conspiracies about the 2020 presidential election and Fox News headlines about his purported popularity among the American public.

The 34-year-old aide supplies the president with stacks of printed-out drafts and awaits his approval before hitting post, sources told the Journal.

Her work has included posts that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and an AI-generated image of Trump as Jesus Christ. Trump took down both posts after they spurred immense public backlash. In the former instance, Trump claimed he did not see the section of the video that racistly mocked the former president and first lady. A White House official blamed the mistake on an editing error.

The frustration lies partly in the perceived chain of command: Harp does not share her drafts with anyone else in the White House but the president, claiming that she works for him and only him, reported the Journal. That’s prompted tensions between Harp and some of the federal employees affected by her incendiary writing, such as the chief of staff’s office.