The Strange Case of Natalie Harp’s Family

I haven’t posted anything to this “Grandpa Reads the News” blog in a while, and when this story popped up I had to write about it. I put references to the sources for this at the end with links, and I encourage you to also go to the source material. Ok, here goes:

A blurred view of a man in a suit, possibly engaged in a discussion, with two flags in the foreground, one Turkish and one American. In the background, a woman with light hair in a white dress smiles while seated at a table. — This is Natalie Harp behind — and physically close to — President Trump. They were in Ankara, Turkiye for a diplomatic meeting in this picture. It was the meeting where, after it ended, Trump and Ms. Harp secretly snuck out of Air Force One to avoid being blown out of the sky by the Iranians. He left his cabinet members, press pool, and staff behind to stand in as targets — but not Ms. Harp. Image credit: NY Times.

The Washington Post ran an article this week (see reference below) describing Natalie Harp’s upbringing and family struggles. Recall that Ms. Harp is President Trump’s “Special and Executive Assistant.” It took me down a bit of a rabbit hole.

It seems that Ms. Harp’s parents were extreme Christian Evangelicals, going as far as to home-school her in order to prevent Natalie and her brother Preston from learning that there were other ways to see the world. This approach often backfires! In Preston’s case, it backfired spectacularly.

A smiling individual with long hair wearing a cap and glasses, sitting inside a vehicle. — Preston posted this image of himself on Facebook. I don’t know the date of the posting.

At age 15 Preston read Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States” and was never the same. This book is controversial; it covers the perspective of the downtrodden in the US since the 1600s, and how our national institutions kept them that way ever since. The book is often assigned to high school students as part of their introduction to critical thinking and how to view things from both sides. I need to ask my high school aged grandchildren if they have read it, and if so, what they thought. For Preston, growing up in a tightly controlled environment of American booster-ism, reading the book was a turning point. It was information that totally blindsided him. He began to rebel against his parents’ (in his opinion) narrow world view.

The next major milestone for Preston was his father’s death. His father, although also a believer in evangelical Christianity, unlike his mother, wanted to keep the lines of communication with his son open. So Preston had a brief visit with his Dad during the COVID-19 lockdown in the summer of 2020, noted that his Dad did not seem ok, and then a few days later learned that his Dad had taken his own life. The family refused to publicly admit that the death was a suicide, and Preston broke with his Mom and sister shortly afterwards, publicly revealing how his father died.

A person standing outdoors with a sunset backdrop, wearing a white t-shirt with colorful graphics, sunglasses, and a cap, surrounded by wooden posts and greenery. — Preston in Masaya, Nicaragua this past January, with the Nasdasmo community. (Photo credit Cresly Iveth Sevilla courtesy of the Washington Post.)

This is where Preston’s story goes into the rabbit hole. He moved to Nicaragua and became a Sandinista sympathizer. Yes, he moved from California to Nicaragua! The Sandinistas believed that the US was the evil empire, and not the benevolent righteous Christian wonderland that his Mom and Dad had indoctrinated him to think. And after spending some time reading the history of Nicaragua over the past 50 years, I would have to agree that US foreign policy has systematically made conditions worse for the residents there. We did this in the name of fighting “communism” but the real threat was poverty, authoritarianism, and corruption. Which we “fought” by making them worse. If you have a different interpretation, please let me know. It is not a pretty story for any of the parties involved, and is complicated.

While in Nicaragua, Preston had a motorcycle accident that severely injured him. He received excellent medical care for his injuries and had no out-of-pocket expenses, thanks to the country’s “socialist” health care system. This made him harden yet more against the US government which he claims would have forced him into medical bankruptcy had the accident occurred in the US. He could have been correct about this; we can’t know; see the KFF.org link below for some context.

Meanwhile, back to Natalie. The seed planted by her parents of belief in the literal Bible and in conservative values blossomed and flowered. In 2019 she posted on LinkedIn with what I would call an anti-Biden rant that raked Biden and the Democrats over the coals. (I put a link to it below.) The essence of this posting is that, as a cancer patient, and after being the victim of a medical error, her suffering from it was totally the fault of the Democrats. She lived in California, whose state government is controlled by Democrats. Ergo, they caused her pain.

Since then, she has claimed, falsely, that Trump’s policies are the reason why a life saving cancer drug became available to her. So she now claims that Trump saved her life. The LinkedIn post came to the attention of the national Republican party, she was invited to give a speech at a big party event, and the rest is history. She now has the $150,000 job of feeding Trump information that makes him happy, which turn out to be only stories extolling his virtue, and blocking any news from him that might be critical of anything that he says or does. Apparently, she never leaves his side, and carries a portable printer in order to quickly hand him printed copies of the good news.

If you are uncertain about whether this is a good or bad thing, see my reference below to the University of Michigan professors who have studied it.

A woman in a patterned dress walks down the steps of an aircraft, holding a laptop and a bag. In the background, a uniformed military officer stands guard. — Ms. Harp exiting Air Force One this past August at the Morristown, NJ airport en route to Trump’s nearby golf resort. Image: Aaron Schwartz via Getty Images.

Apparently Preston has no interest in returning to the U.S. He lives the life of a local in Masatepe, a Pacific coastal community just outside Managua, where he publishes social media postings that support the current Ortega government.

References:

https://wapo.st/4hNejVC is the story in the Washington Post that got me started. This is supposed to be a link that anyone can follow even without a subscription, but you may need to register for free access.

https://tinyurl.com/y575kc4m. Amazon.com listing for Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” You can buy a paperback or Kindle copy for only $12.50. If you are a high school student, then I recommend it.

https://tinyurl.com/mr87txtu. Obituary for Robert Harp, Preston’s Dad, as published by Biola University where Robert was a faculty member. You get a good sense for how embedded he was in evangelical Christianity from this.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Nicaragua. If you have the patience and brain space, this summary of the history of Nicaragua takes you through what has happened to their economy, people, and governance since 1979 when the Sandinistas overthrew the Samoza family rule. It started well enough, but then not so much.

https://tinyurl.com/yc6pj3dn. This is a KFF.org discussion of the difficulty Americans face with paying for health care. It reports that about 1 in 5 Americans say that they have medical debt which is difficult or impossible to pay. This impacts those with insurance as well as those without.

https://tinyurl.com/24em6u98. The LinkedIn posting that vaulted Natalie Harp to Republican stardom, and led to her job as Executive Assistant to the President. The lesson here is that the written word has a lot of power! Don’t underestimate where an effective piece of writing might take you!

https://tinyurl.com/s6vf3e4z. Summary of research by two University of Michigan professors confirming that if subordinates provide only information that the boss wants to hear, then the boss will make bad decisions. There is a lot of different organizational research around this topic, but the conclusion is not disputed. I just picked this one because it is not behind a paywall and is quite readable.