Melania’s not-so-subtle message to Trump’s favourite aide

“I heard you missed me,” Melania Trump teased last night at her first public outing in a month since the World Cup final. “Here I am.” Timing is everything. After days of speculation about President Donald Trump’s dependence on Natalie Harp, 35, his devoted, round-the-clock “special assistant” and “executive assistant” at the White House, the First Lady was on show surrounded by virile racing car champs. Melania rations her causes as well as her appearances. They usually have to do with supporting children. On this occasion she was at the White House Rose Garden promoting a $2m higher education scholarship for foster children, sponsored by the racing organisation IndyCar and Fox Corporation. Trump gripped his wife’s hand tightly on entering the Rose Garden but after the speech they soon drifted apart. The queenly Melania had made her point. She was the First Lady, Harp the mere helpmate. She did not feel threatened by her in the least. This needed stating because Jon Ossoff, the Democratic Senator for Georgia, had caused heads to explode in Magaworld after claiming that Trump had lost interest in being President. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie,” he quipped, earning instant notoriety. Natalie Harp with Pete Hegseth and President Trump (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) Suddenly, Maga was outraged. Was Ossoff impudently suggesting Trump was sleeping with blameless, defenceless Harp? No, Democrats sniggered, the 80-year-old President was relying on the attractive blonde to be his full-time carer. Known unkindly as the “Human Printer”, Harp is constantly at Trump’s side, printing off flattering social media posts about her boss and serving as his scribe. She was one the few White House staffers secreted onto a special plane in a catering truck with the President at the recent Nato summit (it recently emerged she worked for a year at the White House without security clearance). Only one right-wing commentator, Jesse Watters, had the good sense to exclaim about Ossoff on Fox News: “Has Trump said so much worse? So much more sleazy things about other people? Yes. Have I defended those things? Absolutely. So I’m not going to pretend I’m all hot and bothered about it, and the President doesn’t care.” On Thursday, Melania’s “Fostering the Future” event was a chance to show that she was equally unfazed by allegations in the media – ranging from claims that she was locked in a “secret power struggle” with Harp to unsubstantiated rumours that she was living virtually separately from Trump. Not for the first time, Melania came to Trump’s defence, as when she claimed his comments about grabbing women by their private parts on the Access Hollywood tape were just “locker room talk”. She always serves as her husband’s firewall when times get tough. However, Melania had a surprise up her sleeve. Promoting her fostering initiative on television was a handsome, long-haired tech dude called Marc Beckman, who goes by the grandiose title “Exclusive Senior Advisor to First Lady Melania Trump”. Marc Beckman has been advising Melania since her Amazon docuseries (Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images) Hang on a moment. Does Melania have her own fancier version of Natalie? Beckman, it turns out, has been advising Melania ever since her eponymous $40m Amazon docuseries. Two sequels are in the works. On his LinkedIn page, Beckman describes himself as a “strategic advisor, producer and cultural architect operating at the intersection of global policy, media and emerging technology”. He also writes about AI, crypto and robotics. This could explain why Melania claimed at the start of her speech that, “We are at the beginning of an era defined by artificial intelligence, robotics and industries that have yet to be imagined”, before going on to talk about foster kids. So, both Trumps have rather good-looking aides. Trump has always been surrounded by attractive women, and we know how much appearance matters to him. The same used to be true of Melania, but some of her closest advisers during her first term as First Lady turned into ferocious critics. Harp has promised to serve Trump faithfully to the end. Various weird missives from Harp have come to light, including one in which she states, “You are all that matters to me… I don’t ever want to let you down”. She also claimed in a letter, “I want things always to be right between us” before signing off, “With all my heart, Natalie”. I can’t imagine Melania ever writing to Trump like that. Far from chasing him, she is proud of playing hard to get when they first met at the Kit Kat club in New York, according to her 2024 memoir, Melania. However irritated she may be by Harp’s constant presence, my guess is Melania thinks “rather her than me”. This leaves her free to live as she pleases, while Trump does the same.