President Donald Trump was seen apparently yelling at Natalie Harp, the close personal assistant with whom he reportedly shares an unusually tight bond, and the moment has shed fresh light on how the president's staff cope with his volatile temper.

While media coverage has focused on the jarring image of Harp forcing a smile for the cameras as a scowling Trump points at the ground beside her, Trump biographer Michael Wolff says the president is notorious among aides for his abusive behavior — so much so that his staff have developed a code for managing his moods.

"Everybody takes abuse," Wolff told his podcast co-host Joanne Coles, according to a Thursday report by The Daily Beast's Erkki Forster. He added that everyone who works for the president will eventually find themselves on the receiving end of his tongue-lashings.

Wolff, who has written four tell-all books about Trump — including the 2018 bestseller "Fire and Fury" — and spent time in the White House during his first term, revealed that aides devised a secret phrase to tip one another off about what awaited them before seeing the president.

"People around Trump would say, 'How's the weather?'" the author recounted, describing a discreet shorthand for asking, "What's his mood?" In Wolff's telling, the check-in ritual underscores how much weight aides place on the president's state of mind before any direct encounter.

Forster quoted Wolff as adding: "This is a man who is wholly unfiltered. There are no restraints here... If he feels it, if he thinks it, he expresses it, and his powers of expression are... blunt force. That's it. You're going to get it. It's going to come at you."

Wolff also said that women who work for Trump face a particularly tough time.

"And let's remember, these women around him... they are there... in the most abject capacity... There's no pretense that they are there for any other reason but the succor of Donald Trump. They are there to be his comfort blanket," Wolff said, according to Forster.

Forster also noted that Harp, who leaves loving letters for Trump in various places around the White House where he can find them, included in one of those notes comments that appeared to be a plea for forgiveness for unspecified actions that had angered him.

"If there is anything else I have done to cause you trouble, please forgive me," Harp wrote.

'Nobody likes him'

Wolff is not the only onetime insider to describe the atmosphere around Trump in blunt terms. In July, Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump's White House communications director for 11 days in 2017, said that no one who works for Trump sincerely likes him because of his mean-spirited behavior.

"Getting fired after 11 days was brutal, but there was also a genuine sense of relief," Scaramucci posted on X. "Yes I had a shortcoming. I failed at the job. There was humiliation in it, but there was also relief."

He added: "Here's what I've observed about everyone around Trump. Nobody likes him. I don't think his family members like him. I don't think his cabinet members really like him. They kiss his a—— because he's powerful."

Scaramucci concluded: "The people who genuinely like him are one or two electron orbits away, close enough to feel the warmth, far enough to avoid the heat. I don't know a single person in his inner circle who came out unscathed."

Speaking to AlterNet in September, Scaramucci observed that people who know Trump and are aware of his personality flaws stick by him out of fear.

"We started this interview by me saying that they only care about themselves and their own personal power, and they've become cowards," Scaramucci told AlterNet. "If they were not cowards, they would've sought Donald Trump's removal. If they were not cowards, they would've convicted Donald Trump in his second impeachment after the ridiculous, and I want to emphasize the ridiculous, Matthew, the insurrection and the fomenting of that insurrection. If they were not cowards... But they're cowards."