During a campaign rally in Atlanta on Sunday, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) hammered away at President Donald Trump over the war in Iran, saying there’s “something uniquely despicable about lying a nation into war”, treating citizens as fools and those who serve as pawns. Then he contrasted the horrific conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln with how the president spends his own time.
“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings,” Ossoff said. “He golfs and trades stocks. He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
“Natalie” refers to Natalie Harp, a 35-year-old White House aide. In 2020, Harp spoke at the Republican National Convention, sharing a story about her battle with bone cancer. Harp credited Trump with saving her life, citing a 2018 “right to try” law, something that was immediately disputed. She went on to host a show at One America News before leaving to work for Trump in 2022. She is a constant presence at his side, and seems to be (for more than a few reasons) a bit of a weirdo.
Did Ossoff insult Harp? No. Did Ossoff imply that there was anything sexual going on between Trump and Harp? No. Who was this an attack on? Donald Trump, for leaving his Secretary of State, his Treasury Secretary, and the entire White House press pool on a decoy plane so that Harp could ride with him on the safe one.
A closer look at the outrage
The “Trump saved her life” story got a lot of early traction despite the fact that Ossoff never mentioned Harp’s health. Not her cancer, not her treatment, not the 2018 law she touts. All he said was that she travels with the president. But it didn’t matter.
Right-wing accounts like Scott Jennings, @johnnymaga, Robby Starbuck, Katie Pavlich, Laura Loomer, and Rep. Brandon Gill all invoked her health in posts pushing back on Ossoff.
The second type of post was a claim that Ossoff was being sexist, which involved at least a small leap from what he actually said to what they think he meant. And look, I can get there. Maybe there’s a bit of innuendo there. But the leaps these right-wing critics took were a bit ridiculous.
CJ Pearson accused Ossoff of “implying Natalie Harp, a devoted, disciplined aide to President Trump, slept her way to the top.” Greg Price echoed that interpretation. Scott Jennings made multiple posts along these lines. Former White House communications staffer Abigail Jackson accused Ossoff of making “a misogynistic attack.” Mercedes Schlapp called it a “sexist remark.”
And finally, there’s the funniest group of all: people pretending that Harp is just some random woman and not a longtime aide to the president of the United States. Mark Levin, Larry O’Connor, Lee Zeldin, Bill Stepien, Colton Snedecor, and Josh McKoon all acted incredulous.
The flop
None of these people are actually upset.
I know that’s a claim about the inside of someone’s head, so let me put it this way: no, I do not believe that the people who spend their days defending Donald “Quiet, Piggy“ Trump care about sexism or personal insults or looking out for women or anything like that. Sorry, I just don’t. I don’t believe that the people who defend the administration that turns deportation flights into TikTok content actually care about leaving people alone. So what’s it for?
Media coverage, mostly. A chance to accuse Democrats of being sexist or something like that. If enough people say a thing loudly enough, journalists will start putting out stories about how Ossoff’s comment “sparked backlash” or “accusations of sexism,” and now there’s suddenly a controversy that the press can ask other politicians about.
And it’s really, truly, genuinely funny to watch Scott Jennings and Mark Levin lecture anybody about how to talk about women, or to watch Newt Gingrich announce that Ossoff “owes Natalie Harp a personal apology for having smeared her.” Newt Gingrich, ffs!
But you’ve seen this before, just in a different kind of arena.
Where’s the first place the guys in those videos look as soon as they hit the ground? To the refs. Not at the players who “fouled” them. They’re trying to sell the ref on a version of reality that isn’t quite real. Sure, the player got bumped, but were they fouled? Meh. Maybe?
And once enough people agree that a foul happened, “Ossoff’s sexist remark about Natalie Harp” just becomes reality in a lot of spheres. Maybe it’ll stick. Maybe it won’t. One way to help these narratives stick is for Democrats to take the right-wing framing at face value, denouncing their own side as a show that they’re not just some sort of partisan. And that’s exactly what David Axelrod did. He called the speech “a brutal takedown,” and then handed them the thing they’d spent three days digging for: “But two words in it, ‘with Natalie’ seemed gratuitous and unnecessary.”
Gah!
They had no compunctions about slandering “heels-up Harris” during the election. (Which is especially rich since Harris has such a deep resume while Harp was homeschooled and has no resume at all.)
Axelrod can eat a bag of dicks for all I care. One flippant remark from Ossoff and for once a Democrat drives the news cycle, and what does Axelrod do? He has aneurysm. Ossoff seems to have the good sense to ignore the consultants this this around. More Dems need to follow suit.