Melania vs. Natalie: Power struggle for Trump's affections revealed

Matthew Rozsa
17 August
Natalie Harp, executive assistant to President Donald Trump, listens as he signs the Secure America Act in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., June 10, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci

The two most important women in President Donald Trump's life, First Lady Melania Trump and young staffer Natalie Harp, are reportedly feuding for the affections of the man in the White House.

"Melania Trump is locked in a secret power struggle with Donald Trump’s 35-year-old assistant, according to the president’s biographer," reported The Daily Beast's Erkki Forster on Monday.

Forster added, "White House aide Natalie Harp has become seemingly inseparable from President Donald Trump, and her near-constant presence is made all the more striking by Melania’s conspicuous absence. A Daily Beast analysis found that the 56-year-old first lady was seen in public just 47 times in 2025, after the president’s Jan. 20 inauguration, and then just 38 days in the first seven months of 2026."

The journalist continued, "Melania is steering clear of her 80-year-old husband because she has little interest in sharing his side with Harp, according to Trump biographer Michael Wolff." Journalist Michael Wolff, who specializes in covering the Trump's also explained in a Monday post on Substack that Melania is less frequently by Trump's side because she is jealous of Harp.

“Melania, whose appearances with her husband were carefully negotiated and choreographed, would not show up if Harp was around,” Wolff wrote. “Since Harp was always around, Melania never was—appearing with her husband only in the last week of the campaign.”

Sometimes referring to disparagingly as Trump's "diaper nurse" (by social media users) or his "human binkie" (by New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman), Harp recently entered the spotlight when Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) implied that the relationship between the two is improper.

“He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar,” Ossoff said in a recent speech. When former Trump adviser Bryan Lanza attacked Ossoff's comments as "gutter politics," he was called out for hypocrisy.

“I think they're both the gutter, but that's gutter politics,” Lanza said, conflating Ossoff's comments with Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung's denunciation of Ossoff as a "j - ---. "That's where we are today. That's where we've been for a while. It's where we've landed. And that's where we're going to stay.”

Elliot Williams, a former federal prosecutor, ridiculed Lanza’s outrage.

“I love you, man, I appreciate that,” the laughing Williams told Lanza. “I just — it's a little rich, after nearly a decade of Donald Trump, for anyone in the United States to start pointing a finger at someone for rhetoric or language around, frankly, sex.”

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