At first, it looks like a very standard social media post from Donald Trump’s White House. A video shows the President grinning as he waves around a green flag at the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, Melania close by his side. The caption reads simply: “When someone says Trust in Trump”.

The content (and capitalisation) might be a bit strange and self-aggrandising, but that’s nothing unusual for Team Trump. But when you look closer, something else is strange – the image seems oddly zoomed in, leaving parts of the flag out of shot. Only two-thirds of Melania is in picture. And most telling of all, the logo in the top-left of the video says “OX”, rather than “FOX”.

Something has been cropped out of this video before the White House posted it. CNN went back going to the original footage as aired on Fox. Sure enough, in the section of the frames cropped out by the White House, there was Natalie Harp – the Trump aide who is the focus of a media storm centred on the bizarre nature of her relationship with the President.

The odd dynamic between Trump and Harp was propelled into the spotlight after a passing barb in a rally speech by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, saying Trump would rather “travel with Natalie” than do the job of president, provoking a furious blanket reaction from the White House and pro-Trump influencers.

That reaction gave the story traction, and drew attention to bizarre past behaviour by Harp, including her fervent tweets in support of Trump during the January 6 Capitol riot, before she worked for him. That behaviour escalated once she entered his orbit: she was pictured running after his golf cart on one occasion. On another, she reportedly threw herself into the boot of a vehicle, rather than miss out on travelling with the President when there weren’t enough seats.

Most alarming, though – apparently even to the Secret Service – were letters Harp wrote to her boss, saying she was “unworthy” of him, that “you are all that matters to me”, “I don’t ever want to let you down” and how she missed the way “we’d talk about everything and nothing”.

This kind of coverage feels like it has been torn out of a schlocky TV drama, or even a soap opera. It might also seem sexist: male aides to the president don’t have to endure anything like this kind of scrutiny. But even though Trump requires grotesque flattery from everyone in his orbit, Harp is unusual – even her own brother has given media interviews suggesting she views Trump as a surrogate for their dead father.

Every White House attracts some people – even occasionally on staff – who form a strange, sometimes parasocial, relationship with the president. Usually, handling them involves keeping them at a safe distance from the commander-in-chief, and waiting for the storm to blow over.

But that doesn’t seem to be an option with Harp. Despite having reportedly worked for her first year without a security clearance, and the obvious concerns around her letters – which were, after all, leaked to the media – Harp has a level of control over Trump’s media diet that is without precedent in the modern presidency.

Harp is sometimes dismissively described as Trump’s “human printer”, because of her role constantly passing the President notes. Sometimes these are draft social posts for Trump – who rarely types his own messages, preferring to dictate them – to approve, and sometimes they are printouts of other people’s posts, for him to enjoy. Often, though, they are news updates on whatever Harp thinks the President wants to know about.

The President of the United States has access to the world’s best-funded and best-trained intelligence agencies, who traditionally prepare a daily briefing for him with the top-level facts about the most important issues facing the world that day. Trump, though, is different – reportedly, more often than not, he skips the daily briefing entirely, and has long complained he finds it boring, too long, or too detailed.

That leaves the media consumption of the single most powerful man in the world almost entirely in the hands of a woman who even Trump staff are concerned about. And no one seems able to change that: Harp is devoted to Trump, but the President seems reliant on her in return. White House chronicler Maggie Haberman has even described Harp as Trump’s “binky”.

The White House is clearly and understandably uncomfortable with the level of global media attention the Harp-Trump relationship is attracting – but no one around Trump seems able to do anything to actually change it. Instead, they’re tackling the one thing they can control: what we can see on their social media feed.

On X, moving Harp out of sight is as easy as cropping a video. Reality might prove far more difficult to change.