President Donald Trump's son Eric Trump rushed to defend White House aide Natalie Harp on Wednesday while attributing her "looks" to "genetics," a Trump family obsession.
Eric Trump's post on X came after CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront aired an interview with Natalie Harp's estranged brother, Preston Harp, who called her devotion to the president an "unhealthy obsession."
"What absolute trash," Eric Trump snapped on X. "CNN continues to be a joke."
"Natalie is an incredible young woman — a cancer survivor, a genuinely good person, and arguably one of the hardest-working people in the White House," he continued.
"She's deeply committed to my father, to her job, and to this country," Eric Trump added. "From the looks of it, she got all the family genetics."
The post followed a CNN profile published Tuesday reporting that Natalie Harp once jumped into the trunk of an SUV in Trump's motorcade rather than be left behind during a 2023 court appearance.
"It's actually kind of sad… that's like an unhealthy obsession," Preston Harp told CNN.
Preston Harp said his sister had been writing letters to presidents since she was a teenager — long before she claimed Trump was her "first exposure to politics."
"I think that's where her infatuation for Trump comes from, honestly," he said, "because I don't think it's a physical attraction. Let's get real."
Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio documented in a 2016 PBS Frontline film that the Trumps subscribe to what he called a "racehorse theory of human development."
"They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring," D'Antonio said in the film.
"I'm a gene believer," Donald Trump said in a 2010 CNN interview, according to CNN. "Hey, when you connect two racehorses, you usually end up with a fast horse."
Donald Trump Jr. told D'Antonio he shares that belief, saying he considers himself "in the high percentile on the bell curve."
