Sarah Matthews, a deputy White House press secretary during President Donald Trump's first term, said this week that White House aide Natalie Harp's closeness to Trump had "alarmed" the Secret Service and unnerved his 2024 campaign staff. Matthews' comments, made during an appearance on CNN's Laura Coates Live on Monday, came a day after Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, singled out Harp by name at a campaign rally, accusing Trump of preferring to "travel with Natalie" instead of doing his job. "They tried to get her to not stay at Bedminster that summer while they were on the campaign trail, because even campaign staff recognized that it was a weird relationship between the two," Matthews said, referring to efforts by Trump's 2024 campaign staff to keep Harp from staying with him at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
"So what did Natalie Harp do? She stayed in the women's locker room all summer long. So I think that it's fair to point out the sycophancy of her in particular, and their close relationship." Newsweek reached out to Matthews for comment.
Ossoff made the comment Sunday while criticizing Trump's handling of the war in Iran and the situation onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. "While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings," Ossoff told the crowd. "He golfs and trades stocks.
See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar." Asked Monday by MS Now's Jen Psaki why he mentioned Harp specifically, Ossoff said he had heard the aide described as Trump's "security blanket" and argued that senior staff was telling the president "what he wants to hear" rather than what he needs to hear "and the nation is at war." Trump was asked about the remarks Monday in the Oval Office. He dismissed Ossoff as a Pee-wee Herman look-alike and did not directly address the substance of the comment, instead pivoting to defend his White House ballroom construction project as a security and infrastructure upgrade.
The exchange escalated further that day when CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes asked Trump in the Oval Office to respond to Ossoff's remarks. Trump repeatedly told Holmes to be quiet and called her "a fake reporter." Hours later, the official White House Rapid Response account posted on X that Holmes' children would one day be "sickened and embarrassed" by her question, drawing swift condemnation from journalists and former Trump aides, including Matthews. In a statement shared with Newsweek, White House spokesman Davis Ingle criticized Ossoff's record and rhetoric.
Lightweight Jon’s rhetoric is cringeworthy, but his extreme voting record is dangerous,” he said. Harp, 35, first came to Trump's attention in 2019, when she credited a federal right-to-try law he signed with giving her access to experimental treatment for stage 2 bone cancer. He invited her to join his 2020 campaign advisory board and to speak at that year's Republican National Convention.
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