The reprehensible douchebag that is Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) needed only one first name to start a political firestorm.
While attacking President Donald Trump at an Atlanta rally Sunday, Ossoff said Trump didn't want to do the job of president. "He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie," Ossoff said, referring to Natalie Harp, Trump's special assistant and executive assistant.
Ossoff never accused Trump and Harp of having an affair, to be clear, but he didn't have to. The wording left just enough hanging in the air for everyone else to start sniffing around.
And sniff they did.
Within days, worthless meat sack investigators discovered Harp's age, appearance, devotion to Trump, travel with him, clothing, personal letters, and physical proximity to the president became fodder.
One headline reduced the story to "Trump, 80" and his "Blonde Aide, 35." Another called her Trump's "blonde companion." A Thursday profile described her hair, shoes, dresses, and supposedly "unusually intimate bond" with Trump.
Examining Harp's influence is fair game. Turning a female White House aide into a breathless story about the older president and the younger, attractive blonde beside him is something else.
From the Daily Beast:
Trump was forced to address the issue on Monday after Democratic rising star Jon Ossoff publicly questioned the president’s closeness with his 35-year-old executive assistant, declaring at a rally that Trump would much rather “travel with Natalie” and build the White House ballroom than do his job as president.
Asked in the Oval office about Ossoff’s comments, Trump hit back at the Georgia senator, who is up for re-election in November, before immediately reverting to a lengthy rant about his pet vanity project.
“You mean Pee-wee Herman? (He’s a) Pee-wee Herman look-alike,” the president said, referencing the nickname he has given to Ossoff.
The comments are the first time Trump has been asked publicly about Harp, who has become an ever-present figure in his orbit.
In recent weeks, she has been photographed alongside him at Camp David, spotted next to him at his Bedminister Golf Club, and has been seen watching on adoringly as Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office requiring childhood vaccine shots to be spaced out.
This from Vanity Fair:
Donald Trump, president of the United States and notorious bottle blond, has long been known for his capriciousness when it comes to those he surrounds himself with, able to do 180s on folks who were once trusted colleagues and turn them into video game foes (just look at Michaels Pence, Cohen, and Flynn, to name a few). There’s one peroxide blowout, however, who’s consistently been spotted at Trump’s side, often clutching a disheveled stack of printouts, since 2022: Natalie Harp.
Harp currently holds the dual roles of special assistant and executive assistant to the president. She reportedly sits at a desk just outside the Oval Office; pulls in a taxpayer-funded $150,000 annual salary; has unmatched access to Trump; is responsible for posting his Truth Social missives; travels alongside the president (including during his recent secret airplane switcheroo exodus from Turkey); fields texts from world leaders; and more. Harp even celebrated her 35th birthday earlier this month at Trump’s side: That’s her in the background of the fourth photo in Lara Trump’s Instagram post, ringing in her mid-30s at Trump’s Bedminster golf club.
In All or Nothing, Michael Wolff’s chronicle of the 2024 election, Wolff revealed Harp’s duty as the keeper of the “good-news printer,” with the aide toting a wireless printer to conjure printouts of news articles and emails to hand to Trump for his satisfaction, validation, and jubilation.
Now, let's change the uniform.
Former Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala "Kackles" Harris dated former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in 1994 and 1995, when Brown was California Assembly speaker. Brown appointed Harris to two state boards.
Those are facts.
Harris had already worked as a prosecutor; their relationship ended years before she won her first election, and claims that she simply slept her way into political power went beyond what the evidence established.
When the conservative media turned Harris's relationship with Brown into sexual jokes and suggestions that sex explained her political rise, the political press knew exactly where the whistle was. The attacks were described as sexist, sexualized, demeaning, and out of bounds.
From FactCheck.org:
Harris was 29 in March 1994 when a San Francisco Chronicle columnist described her as Brown’s “new steady,” going on to say that she was “something new in Willie’s love life. She’s a woman, not a girl.” At the time, Brown, who was then 60 years old and speaker of the California State Assembly, had been estranged from his wife for more than a decade.
As speaker, Brown appointed Harris to the California Medical Assistance Commission later that year, which provides the basis for claims that Brown helped Harris’ career that sometimes accompany the claims suggesting that she broke up his marriage. (Brown left the Assembly in 1995, and became mayor of San Francisco until 2004.)
Brown had married Blanche Vitero in 1957 and the couple had three children. But by the early 1970s, Brown was frequently seen around town with young women and his marriage collapsed, according to a 1996 biography written by James Richardson, a senior writer at the Sacramento Bee. It was at this time that Brown got the first of a “series of apartments” of his own, while his “relationship with his wife settled into a mutually beneficial friendship,” Richardson wrote.
A 1984 profile published in the New York Times described Brown as an “escort for attractive women” and “good friend of his former wife,” from whom it says he “separated amicably” two years earlier.
“I don’t know whether the marriage failed and the relationship survived or vice versa, but something very valuable lasted,” Brown wrote in his own 2008 autobiography, explaining that he and his wife had celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2007, although they hadn’t lived together in 25 years.
“Although Blanche and I led very different lives, there was never a breakup,” he wrote. “The two of us kept the family circle going. We’ve always been in each other’s lives. We’re friends.”
Some Republicans even warned their own side to knock it off.
That standard wasn't unreasonable; a woman's relationship with a powerful man doesn't prove that her career is sexual currency.
So apply it.
Harp's access to Trump is newsworthy. Her ability to put information in front of the president is newsworthy. Her role in his social media operation, her travel with him, and the influence she may have inside the White House are all legitimate subjects.
Her blonde hair isn't.
Neither are her shoes, her age beside Trump's age, her battle with cancer, or headlines calling her his "companion" while inviting readers and viewers to speculate about a relationship for which no evidence has been presented.
Ossoff later called Harp a "security blanket" and argued that Trump surrounds himself with aides who tell him what he wants to hear.
Fine. Make that argument, challenge her influence, challenge her judgment, or challenge her work.
But don't spend two years telling America that sexualizing Harris is misogyny, then discover the entertainment value of a 35-year-old blonde when she works for Trump.
The Referee Test isn't complicated: if gendered innuendo deserves a whistle, blow it regardless of which team has the ball.
Same innuendo, different woman, different whistle.
And the referee fails again.
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