The White House has defended a newly hired press aide who posed for a holiday photograph in 2021 wearing a “Fuck Joe Biden” T-shirt and holding a rifle.

Beni Rae Harmony, the new assistant White House press secretary, revealed on Friday that she was going to work for Donald Trump just days after covering him as a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a partisan rightwing outlet originally created as a video podcast platform for the president’s former adviser Steve Bannon.

According to a LinkedIn profile, Harmony, 24, previously worked as a producer for the far-right Turning Point USA host Jack Posobiec – and as a press aide “focusing on crisis management” for two far-right Republicans: congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona and former congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida.

In 2021, when Gosar was censured by the US House for posting an animated video that depicted him killing Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Joe Biden, Harmony recorded an outraged defense of her boss for his YouTube channel.

The photograph of Harmony and an older man posing with rifles in matching anti-Biden shirts, in front of Christmas decorations, was reportedly posted on Instagram in November 2021 by a far-right Republican House candidate, Jarome Bell, who mounted a failed campaign for Congress in 2022.

A screenshot of that post, published by the Daily Mirror, shows that it included the caption: “My campaign Public Affairs Director @beniraeharmony is a beast. This is how we roll.”

Harmony appeared to verify the authenticity of the photograph in December 2021, when it was shared on social media by an anti-Maga outlet, PatriotTakes, which also identified her as an aide to Gosar.

The next day, Harmony replied to the PatriotTakes post of the image with another image of herself, wearing the same shirt in the same location and grinning into the camera. When another social media user posted a sarcastic question about the relationship between the older man and the young woman seen in the image, asking: “Daughter or date?”, Harmony replied with a one-word answer: “Uncle.”

Biden at the time was serving his lone term in the Oval Office, and Trump supporters chanting “Fuck Joe Biden” at a Nascar race that autumn inspired a viral meme featuring a variation of the slogan.

Harmony did not reply to requests to comment on the photograph. But the White House press office responded with a statement from a deputy press secretary, Anna Kelly, who praised the new hire for her advocacy of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, while ostensibly covering the president as a journalist.

“Beni Rae Harmony has been a trusted voice for the MAGA movement as a White House correspondent,” Kelly wrote. “She will be an outstanding addition to President Trump’s communications team as an Assistant Press Secretary – we look forward to having her on board!”

Harmony joins a White House press office that has taken unprecedented steps to ensure that the president is surrounded at all times by correspondents from partisan outlets who shower him with praise, and limit or deny access to reporters from nonpartisan outlets who challenge him.

Trump has tried to ban CNN, Politico and MS Now from the White House entirely, for what he considers overly negative coverage, and his aides now select which outlets are in place to ask him questions, with frequent slots reserved for correspondents who openly support him.

Harmony became the White House correspondent for Real America’s Voice after her predecessor, Brian Glenn, fell out of favor with Trump when his partner, Marjorie Taylor Greene, broke with the president and accused him of betraying the Maga movement.

Glenn had previously worked hard to advance Trump’s political agenda when invited by the president to ask questions. In 2025, for instance, Glenn pointedly asked Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, why he refused to wear a suit in the Oval Office, a question that inflamed an already volatile encounter.

During a press availability on Air Force One last month, Trump approached reporters with a sheaf of papers in his left hand. Harmony asked Trump a series of friendly questions that seemed designed to help him score political points. As TMZ reported on Friday, Associated Press photographs taken during that exchange showed that Harmony’s name was at the top of the first page in the president’s hand, suggesting that he might have been holding her résumé as he took her questions.

Harmony achieved a measure of celebrity in the rightwing media in 2025, when she left her job as an on-air host at a local TV station in Springfield, Illinois, after delivering an on-air tribute to the late Charlie Kirk, describing him as her first boss and mentor.

The station’s news director denied that Harmony had been suspended over the tribute, as she claimed, and clarified that she had never been a member of its news team, and instead hosted a program run by the channel’s sales department that featured clients who paid to be interviewed on television.