Miranda Devine: Jon Ossoff’s disgustingly sly and sexist attack on Trump aide Natalie Harp backfires big time
Jon Ossoff must be pleased with himself.
The accidental senator for Georgia has finally made a name for himself with a disgustingly sly attack on President Trump that insinuated an adulterous relationship with Natalie Harp, the sweet young woman who posts Trump’s social media missives.
Harp, 35, is the last person who deserves such shabby treatment.
She battled debilitating bone cancer in her 20s that caused her severe pain and trapped her in a wheelchair.
She is devoted to President Trump because she believes he saved her life when he gave patients access to experimental drugs in his first term.
She expressed her gratitude to him in a heartfelt speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention while still an anchor at the One America News Network.
He asked her to work for him during his wilderness years between presidencies, and she has been a loyal fixture at his side ever since, through the ordeal of court cases and assassination attempts.
It grieves her that the man she regards as a father figure has been so besieged by evildoers.
Harp is a devout Christian who believes that helping the president combat what she calls the “deranged Radical Left” is God’s work — and who is to say she’s wrong?
Sen. Ossoff, that’s who.
Media jackals
The mediocre non-entity who won a fluke runoff for the Democrats in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, harbors lofty ambitions for 2028.
So, on Sunday, in a grandiose recitation of cookie-cutter anti-Trump talking points at a rally in Atlanta, he smuggled in a cheap shot at Harp, using her first name as a sly wink to thrill his base by implying an unsavory familiarity with the president.
Trump “doesn’t want to do the job; he wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.”
While Dems disingenuously claimed Ossoff was not implying anything untoward, the media took the obvious bait.
CNN, especially, leaped on the smear like ravenous jackals, thrilled for the distraction from the Democrats’ Chinese spy scandal, care of Eric “Fang Fang” Swalwell.
The very private Harp doesn’t give interviews but she is said to remain upbeat, despite it all, and has told friends she is “staying focused, on mission, 24/7. Too much to do, and too little time to do it.”
The willowy home-schooled blonde has a fresh-faced innocence that makes the pile-on seem all the more egregious, which is why an impressive parade of Republican VIPs have lined up to defend her all week.
Nobody believes there is anything in Ossoff’s innuendo — even her estranged brother Preston, 38, whom CNN despicably interviewed.
Preston Harp is clearly Trump-deranged, but he ruled out a romantic relationship between the 80-year-old president and his executive assistant.
The worst thing he could say about his sister was that their mother raised them to “believe in American Exceptionalism,” a concept he abhors.
Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington on ‘Pod Force One.’ Subscribe here!
“Trump is like everything that my mom taught us to respect,” he said.
“I think that’s where her infatuation for Trump comes from, honestly, because I don’t think it’s a physical attraction.”
The tragedy of their father’s suicide in 2020 was dredged up this week as bottom-feeders trawled for dirt.
Turncoat aides from Trump’s first term such as former deputy press secretary-turned-Kamala Harris supporter Sarah Matthews were only too happy to be used by CNN to tarnish Harp in an effort to damage the president.
Matthews claimed the Secret Service was “alarmed” by Harp’s closeness to the president — but how would she know, since she left the White House before Harp started working for Trump.
Her catty remarks are motivated by jealousy, as no doubt were old leaks to the New York Times that Harp once wrote a sycophantic letter to the president.
Smoking gun, much?
Does anyone think that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles would allow a Monica Lewinsky situation on her watch?
Strong women
Not to mention Melania Trump, a formidable woman who is probably the only person in the world the president fears.
The first lady is even less likely to tolerate unseemly shenanigans under her nose.
Throughout his working life, Trump has surrounded himself with strong, competent women such as Wiles, the first female in the job, and Karoline Leavitt, who say he is a fair boss who treats them with respect.
His Democrat foes can’t fathom such a thing.
Does Ossoff really think a hard-working single professional woman can’t succeed without sleeping with her boss?
It doesn’t say much about his own attitude to female staff.
The president labeled Ossoff “Pee Wee Herman” because he looks like the creepy actor Paul Reubens, whose career collapsed after he was charged with indecent exposure in an adult movie theater and later was arrested over alleged child porn.
It’s not the only way Ossoff’s too-clever-by-half barb has backfired on him.
It makes him look grubby and sexist, at odds with the image he has painstakingly cultivated as a decorous Obama wannabe.
Even Democrat grandee David Axelrod called his remarks “gratuitous and unnecessary.”
Ossoff has made a name for himself, all right, but it’s not what he thought.