Latest / INSIGHT TODAY / WH crops Natalie Harp out of photos. Haberman explains why it matters.

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WH crops Natalie Harp out of photos. Haberman explains why it matters. · INSIGHT TODAY

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  Speaker 1: Right. People on the Internet are asking if the White
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  Speaker 1: House is trying to distance itself from Natalie Harp. The
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  Speaker 1: official X page for the White House posted this video
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  Speaker 1: of Trump waving the green flag at the Freedom 250
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  Speaker 1: Grand Prix Sunday. The Internet quickly noticed that Natalie Harp
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  Speaker 1: was basically cropped out of the photo. And Harp has
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  Speaker 1: been stealing headlines since that jab from Senate candidate John Ossoff.
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  Speaker 1: That was more than a week ago. Then there was
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  Speaker 1: this leak of her letters, things she had written to
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  Speaker 1: the president, moments when she called herself unworthy of him.
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  Speaker 1: And now people are looking at her deleted tweets, which
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  Speaker 1: show her support for the president on January 6th and after.
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  Speaker 1: Reports that she was also the one behind a racist
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  Speaker 1: true social video that depicted the Obamas as apes. So
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  Speaker 1: is her spotlight getting too bright? I'm bringing in Maggie Haberman,
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  Speaker 1: White House correspondent with The New York Times. She's also
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  Speaker 1: the co-author of the new book, Regime Change, inside the
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  Speaker 1: imperial presidency of Donald Trump. So this story has taken
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  Speaker 1: on legs longer than some bickering from the candidate from Georgia.
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  Speaker 1: And one of the things I noticed right away was
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  Speaker 1: that leak of letters of hers. It felt as though somebody,
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  Speaker 1: like the call was maybe coming from the inside of
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  Speaker 1: the House, right? And is she making enemies in the
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  Speaker 1: White House?
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  Speaker 2: Jonathan and I get into this pretty, not extensively in
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  Speaker 2: the book, but we do write about Natalie Harp and
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  Speaker 2: how purely devotional she is to Donald Trump. Those letters
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  Speaker 2: were left and we write about them again in the book.
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  Speaker 2: In his personal spaces during the interregnum period when he
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  Speaker 2: was out of office, one of them said, you are
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  Speaker 2: all that matters to me. These letters and some of
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  Speaker 2: her behavior alarmed people around the president, then candidate, including
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  Speaker 2: the Secret Service. And they spoke to people about what
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  Speaker 2: was happening at the time. She is now, there's two
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  Speaker 2: factors here, Artie. One is she is 10 feet away
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  Speaker 2: from him in the Oval Office all the time. She
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  Speaker 2: supplies him, not with all of his information. He obviously
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  Speaker 2: gets intelligence briefings and so forth that she doesn't prepare.
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  Speaker 2: But she provides him sort of this alternate version of information,
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  Speaker 2: including that plays into his view of the deep state,
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  Speaker 2: in his words, of his own government, of being suspicious
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  Speaker 2: of what he is being told. And she was one
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  Speaker 2: of the people who he took with him on that
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  Speaker 2: plane when the older Air Force One was a decoy plane.
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  Speaker 2: Very small group of people. So that's part of why
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  Speaker 2: there is a focus. It matters not because, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the salacious implications aside that the senator and others have
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  Speaker 2: done It matters because she's in government and she's close
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  Speaker 2: to the president.
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  Speaker 1: People are also pointing out her tweets specifically after he
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  Speaker 1: was impeached. And I have to admit, I kind of
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  Speaker 1: feel like being close to Trump table stakes is being
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  Speaker 1: supportive of the Steele and its movement. It doesn't feel
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  Speaker 1: like it's all that unusual to have a person who
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  Speaker 1: would espouse these kinds of ideas. Again, why do you
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  Speaker 1: think it's drawing so much attention?
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  Speaker 2: I think that there is now an interest in her
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  Speaker 2: because she is so close to the president, because she
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  Speaker 2: is not a public figure. Why is she getting all
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  Speaker 2: of this attention? When you are in government and who
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  Speaker 2: is around a president is always something that is going
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  Speaker 2: to be of note and of interest. To your point
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  Speaker 2: about those tweets, whatever you would call them now, ex-posts
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  Speaker 2: that I think are deleted. Yes, the loyalty issue. Do
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  Speaker 2: you believe that January 6th was a legitimate protest and peaceful.
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  Speaker 2: Do you believe that Joe Biden won the election? The
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  Speaker 2: correct answer when it was asked to prospective job candidates
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  Speaker 2: during Trump's transition was not yes, it was no. And
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  Speaker 2: so you are right that this is what everybody is
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  Speaker 2: expected to say. Where were you on January 6th? What
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  Speaker 2: were you saying that day? Were you critical on January 7th?
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  Speaker 2: But again, She is a neon sign of why this
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  Speaker 2: term is so radically different than Term 1. For all
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  Speaker 2: of the belief that there were plenty of sycophants in
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  Speaker 2: Term 1, there was no one like this.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, that's Maggie Haberman. You can check out her new book,
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  Speaker 1: if you haven't already, Regime Change, Inside the Imperial Presidency
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  Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. Thanks so much, Maggie. All right.
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  Speaker 3: Years before Natalie Harp became a key White House aide
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  Speaker 3: to President Trump, she flooded her Twitter feed with posts
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  Speaker 3: demonstrating extraordinary devotion to him on January 6th, 2021, the
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  Speaker 3: day of the Capitol riot. CNN's Isabel Chapman and Andrew
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  Speaker 3: Kaczynski reviewed Harp's now removed account on X. And Isabel
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  Speaker 3: Chapman is joining me right now. Isabel, what did you learn?
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  Speaker 4: So in the last week or so, there has been
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  Speaker 4: a lot of attention focused on the president's aide, Natalie Harp.
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  Speaker 4: And that's in part because Senator John Ossoff invoked her
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  Speaker 4: when criticizing the president, but also because of the administration's
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  Speaker 4: pushback when it defended her role in the White House.
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  Speaker 4: Her consistent proximity to the president and her loyalty have
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  Speaker 4: stood out even among Trump's very devoted inner circle. We
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  Speaker 4: wanted to get a sense of how far back this
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  Speaker 4: devotion to Trump extended. And we learned a lot in
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  Speaker 4: examining a now-removed Twitter feed from HAARP, which goes back
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  Speaker 4: many years. What was particularly interesting was a series of
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  Speaker 4: posts related to the events of January 6, 2021, the
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  Speaker 4: day Trump supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol while Congress
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  Speaker 4: worked to certify Joe Biden was the winner of the
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  Speaker 4: 2020 presidential election. More than 150 tweets that have since
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  Speaker 4: been deleted. It's unclear if X deleted these posts or
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  Speaker 4: if Harp did, but they offered a public display of
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  Speaker 4: fealty before, during and after the Capitol riot. At the time,
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  Speaker 4: Harp was working as a conservative news anchor, but she
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  Speaker 4: continuously praised those fighting to keep Trump in office and
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  Speaker 4: repeatedly cast him in heroic terms.
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  Speaker 3: So what did she say exactly about the president and
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  Speaker 3: his allies that day?
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  Speaker 4: In one post, she amplified Rudy Giuliani's call, let's have
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  Speaker 4: trial by combat. Lawyers for him later said this call
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  Speaker 4: was hyperbolic and not a call for violence. In another,
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  Speaker 4: as the president started speaking near the White House, she
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  Speaker 4: wrote fight for Trump a dozen times within a single post.
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  Speaker 4: She also specifically called out lawmakers who had supported the
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  Speaker 4: election results, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene,
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  Speaker 4: praising their courage and calling them patriots. I should add
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  Speaker 4: that neither Harp nor the White House responded to our
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  Speaker 4: queries about these posts.
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  Speaker 3: So besides January 6th, what else did you find Harp
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  Speaker 3: had written about on Trump?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, Harp had long been tweeting about Trump. We found
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  Speaker 4: posts dating back to 2016 praising him. We also found
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  Speaker 4: that on the day of his impeachment, she tweeted Bible
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  Speaker 4: verses referencing him. In one, she tweeted at him saying,
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  Speaker 4: I thank God upon every remembrance of you. And in another,
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  Speaker 4: she wrote, vindicate at real Donald Trump, my God, and
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  Speaker 4: plead his cause against an unfaithful nation. Now, all of
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  Speaker 4: this fits a pattern that has continued since she began
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  Speaker 4: working for the president. Several years ago, you know, like
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  Speaker 4: the letters from Harp to Trump that were published by
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  Speaker 4: The Daily Beast earlier this week, in which she wrote
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  Speaker 4: to the president about the devotion she has for him.
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  Speaker 4: CNN didn't independently confirm the letters, but the White House
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  Speaker 4: did defend them, telling CNN she is, quote, one of
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  Speaker 4: the most loyal and hardest working aides of the president.
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  Speaker 3: All right. Isabel Chapman, thank you so much for bringing
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  Speaker 3: all that to us. And to read Isabel's full story,
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  Speaker 3: you can find it on CNN.com.