I woke up this morning to an idiot commenting on my Facebook page. That part was not unusual. Idiots wander into my Facebook comments all the time like raccoons discovering an unsecured trash can. What was unusual was that his comment had absolutely nothing to do with the article I had written, which was about Donald Trump and audience capture. Instead, he was furious about some supposedly mean things I had said about a woman named Natalie Harp. Until a few days earlier, I had never heard of Natalie Harp. Her name entered my consciousness only after Jon Ossoff mentioned her at a rally and MAGA world reacted as if he had read Melania’s divorce petition aloud at the State of the Union.
Even then, I hadn’t thought much about Harp until this stranger arrived in my comments to reprimand me for despicable things I had never said about a woman I had never written about. I blocked him and deleted the comment. But then I sat there for a second and thought: Why was this guy so angry over this nobody? What was it about Natalie Harp—a woman whose name I had barely registered—that had inspired some random man to storm onto my Facebook page and defend her against imaginary attacks in an article that did not mention her?
So I went to YouTube, where Natalie Harp immediately began appearing in my thumbnails like the algorithm had been eavesdropping through the vents. Shit, I thought. Maybe I actually should make some despicable comments about this woman. I searched her name, and about four videos later, I realized this entire situation deserved to be roasted properly. That Facebook troll had shown up to defend Natalie Harp from an article that didn’t exist and accidentally commissioned it.
The first thing I found was Bill O’Reilly holding court on his show and calling Ossoff’s remark a “gutter-snipe statement,” which is exactly the kind of self-important phrase you would expect from a man who spent years advertising a “No Spin Zone” while spinning so aggressively he nearly drilled himself into the Earth’s mantle. “You don’t get lower than that,” O’Reilly said, dead serious. “This woman is working for her country, whether you like the Trump administration or not. She has no history of doing anything untoward—none.” First, Bill O’Reilly is not exactly the person I would summon as an expert witness on respecting women in the workplace. When your own professional biography contains an entire chapter titled Fox News, Sexual-Harassment Allegations and Many Millions of Dollars in Settlements, perhaps the women’s-empowerment sash should go to another contestant.
And the line about Harp “working for her country” may have been even funnier. Nobody in Trumpworld works for the country. Everyone in Trumpworld works for one man, and that man is Donald Trump. The Cabinet works for Trump. The communications staff works for Trump. The Republican Party works for Trump. People who supposedly work for the American public spend most of their waking hours printing flattering stories for him, defending his every bowel movement and assuring him that whatever thought just escaped his mouth was the most brilliant idea since indoor plumbing. Natalie Harp may technically receive a government paycheck, but let’s not pretend she is roaming the White House asking what she can do for America. She is there asking what America can do for Donald Trump.
Then, because apparently O’Reilly had not yet stuffed enough hypocrisy into a single segment, he announced that he would rather vote for Vladimir Putin than Jon Ossoff. Not “I’m frustrated.” Not “I think Ossoff crossed a line.” O’Reilly was presented with a sitting United States senator seeking reelection on one side and an authoritarian murderer currently waging a war of conquest in Europe on the other, and Captain America picked Putin. Apparently, saying something mildly suggestive about Natalie Harp is a moral atrocity, but invading Ukraine, imprisoning political opponents and leaving critics mysteriously dead is something Bill can overlook if the alternative is voting for a Democrat.
Chris Cuomo is not always my cup of tea, but occasionally somebody dunks the teabag for exactly the right amount of time. Cuomo went straight at O’Reilly: “You would vote for a murderer?” he asked. “You’d vote for Vladimir Putin, who is a murderer. You’d vote for a murderer over a U.S. senator.” And O’Reilly—the man who built an entire brand around never retreating, never apologizing and never allowing a liberal to get the last word—folded faster than a lawn chair at the first sign of rain. “Well, when you frame it that way,” he said, “I might stay home.”
When you frame it that way? Chris Cuomo had not distorted anything. He had merely repeated O’Reilly’s own sentence slowly enough for O’Reilly to hear how insane it sounded. Bill did not say, “I misspoke,” or “I take that back.” He simply downgraded from voting for a murderous dictator to sitting on his ass during an American election, as though abstaining from democracy was the thoughtful compromise he had been searching for all along. Fine, Chris. I won’t vote for Putin. But I refuse to participate until someone apologizes to Natalie Harp.
Cuomo also did what actually needed to be done and pointed out the hypocrisy in real time: “The idea that you or a Scott Jennings have your panties in a bunch over what Ossoff said about a woman connected to the president, when this man does nothing but denigrate women for sport on a regular basis.” O’Reilly scoffed and tried to redirect the conversation toward Cuomo’s history of criticizing Trump, because when the facts become inconvenient, apparently the “No Spin Zone” converts into a traffic circle. Cuomo refused to follow him around it. “It matters,” he said. “It’s a little rich, Bill.” A little rich? Bill O’Reilly lecturing anyone about respecting women while defending Donald Trump is a German chocolate cake stuffed with truffles and served on a yacht.
After seeing how much attention this story received, I would probably hate Jon Ossoff too if I were these people. One throwaway line from him turned Natalie Harp from Trump’s largely anonymous human printer into a national political story. But if they are looking for somebody to blame, they should probably start with themselves. I wouldn’t be writing this article if MAGA had shrugged, rolled its eyes and moved on. Most people wouldn’t know Natalie Harp’s name if Trump’s defenders had not reacted to Ossoff’s passing comment like he had accused her of operating a meth lab beneath the Oval Office.
This was the Streisand effect after somebody injected it with horse steroids. Ossoff tossed out one sentence at a rally, and MAGA responded with days of furious statements, television segments, personal insults and demands that everyone stop talking about the woman they could not stop talking about. They took a story that might have survived for six hours and personally enrolled it in an immortality program. So yes, they can hate Ossoff if that makes them feel better. But he only struck the match. They emptied the gasoline truck, set themselves on fire and then screamed at the rest of us for noticing the smoke.
After watching that hissy fit, I wanted to know whether O’Reilly was an outlier or merely the oldest man at the tantrum, so I went looking for other right-wing crybabies who had suffered emotional collapse over one oblique sentence from a Georgia senator. As usual, YouTube did not disappoint. MAGA had apparently convened an emergency meeting of the He-Man Woman Respecters Club, and every member had been issued a microphone.
White House communications director Steven Cheung called Ossoff “the biggest cuck loser in politics,” because nothing proves your concern about misogyny quite like responding with a sexualized insult built around the humiliation of another man’s wife. Jon Ossoff has been married to Dr. Alisha Kramer for nearly a decade and, to the best of my knowledge, she is the only woman he has ever been publicly linked to. There has certainly been no credible suggestion that he has cheated on her. Donald Trump, by contrast, has been married three times, publicly cheated on at least one wife and was found by a jury to have sexually abused another woman. Yet somehow Ossoff is the “cuck.” Perhaps Cheung should look that word up before using it again, preferably somewhere other than the comment section of an Andrew Tate video.
Megyn Kelly, who has made an entire second career out of locating the least defensible hill in America and building a luxury home on top of it, declared that “Ossoff was clearly implying that Trump was having an affair with his staffer.” Clearly? Ossoff said Trump would rather “travel with Natalie” than do his job. Megyn supplied the sex herself and then became outraged that Ossoff had forced her to imagine it. That is not political analysis. That is writing your own fan fiction and filing a complaint against the author.
Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna called Ossoff a “sexist arrogant jerk,” which was especially precious coming from a woman who remains one of Donald Trump’s most enthusiastic defenders. According to Luna, one suggestive sentence from Ossoff is sexism, but supporting a man who has called women dogs, pigs and horseface apparently qualifies as feminism. Susan B. Anthony walked so Anna Paulina Luna could sprint to the nearest camera and defend Donald Trump’s honor.
Pundit Robby Starbuck called Ossoff “a vile coward for insinuating they’re having an affair.” Again, the people insisting that Ossoff accused Trump and Harp of having sex are spending far more time describing the alleged sex than Ossoff ever did. Scott Jennings, the guy Cuomo mentioned, told Ossoff to “own your sexist joke, bro.” Nothing says sober concern for women quite like ending your lecture with “bro,” as though Jennings were confronting Ossoff beside a keg at a fraternity party. Own your sexist joke, bro. Women deserve respect, dude. Now grab me another beer.
Meghan McCain joined the pile-on, calling the coverage “absolutely insane” and asking, “What is wrong with everyone?!” Meghan McCain asking why a political story has become disproportionately centered on a famous person’s relative is the closest this saga has come to developing self-awareness. Mercedes Schlapp declared, “I don’t think any woman would want to travel with Ossoff. Natalie is smart, professional and successful. Ossoff has to make a sexist remark.” Ossoff’s actual wife has apparently been traveling through life with him for nine years, but perhaps nobody remembered to consult her before Mercedes announced that the entire female population had rejected him.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle, refusing to be outdone in the category of Accidental Self-Parody, called Ossoff a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama.” That is a fascinating way to condemn sexism: defend a woman by using femininity as an insult against a man. Ingle was so determined to prove Ossoff disrespected women that he accidentally explained what he thinks of men who resemble them. He did not merely step on the rake. He picked it up, inspected it and slammed it into his own forehead.
Hugh Hewitt got into an actual on-air shouting match about the controversy on Bret Baier’s show and was accused by a Democratic panelist of having his “panties in a bunch,” Hewitt responded exactly as you would expect a man without his panties in a bunch to respond: by shouting some more. And then Eric Trump, the family’s designated hitter whenever Donald needs a defense that sounds as though it was assembled from refrigerator magnets, praised Harp as “an incredible young woman” and one of the hardest-working people in the building. Eric may even believe that. Natalie probably does work hard. Maintaining one grown man’s emotional terrarium appears to be an exhausting full-time job.
Here is where I have to laugh. All of you morons calling Ossoff sexist over one insinuating sentence do realize whose ass you are kissing, right? This is the same man caught on tape bragging about grabbing women without their consent. A civil jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million; another jury ordered him to pay an additional $83.3 million for continuing to defame her. He has called women “dogs,” “horseface” and “piggy.” He evaluates women’s appearances as casually as most people check the weather. Just last week, he stood before a room full of police officers repeatedly talking about “young, beautiful girls” after acknowledging that he supposedly wasn’t allowed to call them beautiful.
But Ossoff says Trump would rather “travel with Natalie” than do his job, and suddenly these people are clutching pearls so hard they are cutting off circulation to their fingers. They have spent a decade ignoring, excusing or applauding Trump’s degradation of women, yet one mildly suggestive line from a Democrat turned them into the traveling cast of The Vagina Monologues. Pick a lane. You cannot spend ten years riding shotgun in the Pussy Grabber Express and then pull the emergency brake because Jon Ossoff made you uncomfortable for twelve seconds.
Just when I thought the story could not become any more bizarre, Harp’s own brother weighed in, and I laughed my ass off. I am still laughing, honestly. Preston Harp, who says he has been estranged from his sister, went on CNN’s OutFront with Erin Burnett and simply started talking. Asked about the report that Natalie once climbed into the trunk of a motorcade vehicle because there was no room for her inside, he cracked up before saying, “That’s really funny. I didn’t even know about that.”
Then Preston kept going. [“It’s actually kind of sad. That’s obsession. That’s, like, an unhealthy obsession with someone, if you’re g…
