Fight like Jon Ossoff.
The Georgia senator knows how to call attention to Trump's corruption. And it's driving Republicans mad.
If there is a single takeaway from the unfurling “scandal” over Senator Jon Ossoff calling out Donald Trump’s creepy relationship with a young aide, it is this: Democrats should be more like Jon Ossoff.
At a rally in Atlanta on Sunday, Ossoff called out the commander-in-chief’s reckless war, with a pointed jab:
“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings, 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.”
He was talking about Natalie Harp, the 35-year-old executive assistant reporters describe as Trump’s “security blanket,” and the aide who joined the small group of presidential advisers who secretly switched planes with Trump in Turkey to avoid traveling on Air Force One while it was supposedly being targeted by Iran. The White House proceeded to lose its mind over Ossoff’s quip. The communications director called the senator “Jon Jackoff” and “the biggest cuck loser in politics,” while a spokesman called him a “feminine theater kid.” Trump went with a milquetoast jab almost no Gen-Z-er would even understand, accusing Ossoff of acting like “Pee-wee Herman.”
A calm and collected Ossoff responded the very next day by smiling and reminding the world that Trump is a “draft-dodging crook president.”
I just want to make two comments about this ordeal.
First, Ossoff nailed it.
Naturally, Republicans are flooding social media today to make you believe the senator’s jab was beneath the dignity of our politics. But let’s consult the abbreviated record of the man they’re defending. Donald Trump was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll… he was convicted of 34 felonies for covering up hush money to a porn star he slept with shortly after his wife gave birth… he was recorded bragging about grabbing women by the genitals… roughly two dozen women have accused him of sexual misconduct… he spent years palling around with Jeffrey Epstein, praising a man who liked women “on the younger side”… and at this very moment, his attorney general is in federal court defying a judge’s orders to release FBI interview notes concerning a woman who alleges Trump sexually assaulted her when she was thirteen years old (an allegation Trump denies but is apparently desperate to keep buried).
I found it weird enough when I worked for Trump that he always surrounded himself with attractive young girls (where it was just outside the Oval Office… just down the hall at the front desk… or basically in every office in the building). I find it even weirder that, these days, he picks the ones who literally write him notes and leave them in his personal quarters saying things like “You are all that matters to me” and “I want to bring you joy.”
These are the pearls Republicans are clutching. They are shocked — shocked! — that anyone would insinuate impropriety by a convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who hires people like Natalie to serve under him. Good luck turning that into a political asset in a midterm year.
So no, Ossoff’s critique isn’t “low-brow.” It’s a scorching hot laser beam. He took documented reporting of Trump’s corruption (including the secret flights, the ballroom obsession, the golf, the stock trades, the war he’s losing, and the weird stories about his too-adoring personal assistant) and compressed it into one sentence that delivered a hornet sting to the wannabe dictator in the White House.
Second, the “scandal” reveals something more important that everyone in the political opposition must take note of.
Ossoff has rediscovered the Achilles’ heel of autocrats. And it’s mockery. Strongmen can handle all the hatred because, weirdly (and this is Trump’s long-standing view), the hatred confirms their power. What they actually have such a hard time with is laughter. When people point and laugh, they cower and quiver. The tactic is as old as time.
In Heroes of History, legendary historian Will Durant writes about how the earliest comedians did this in ancient Athens, wielding humor as a powerful weapon to expose political corruption and greed. None landed a harder blow than Aristophanes, who tormented the tyrants of Athens from the stage. Amidst a foreign conflict that threatened to bring down the fledgling Athenian democracy, the playwright’s productions were purported to be “brilliant, coarse, and merciless,” Durant wrote, “calling for a return to an almost forgotten morality, and crying for an end to war.”
Or fast forward to when Charlie Chaplin famously punctured Hitler’s mystique, while half the world still appeased the thuggish mustached man. Or consider the example of two of my contemporary favorites: (1) Alexei Navalny, who did more damage to Putin with one video mocking his gaudy secret palace than a decade of communiqués ever did; and (2) Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian who once played a president on television, and who has out-dueled the Kremlin for four years running as the actual president of Ukraine. (There’s a reason in China that Xi Jinping bans Winnie the Pooh memes and that President Erdogan in Turkey prosecutes comedians.) The ridicule works.
Trump understands this instinctively, which is why the briefest, winking mention of “Natalie” in Ossoff’s speech produced a coordinated White House meltdown. Ossoff found the nerve, and — oh boy — it connected with the whole body of Trump’s corruption. Now, the president is screaming in agony.
I’ve watched Democrats spend the better part of the past decade drafting strongly worded letters and waiting for our institutions to save us. Ossoff, the supposedly vulnerable incumbent, has been choosing a different path. While he’s no trained comedian, he’s out there with the swagger of Aristophanes by pointedly naming the enablers, mocking the corrupt, and smiling wryly as Trump and his minions demand apologies.
So here’s a lesson for every Democrat who’s tried to do battle with a lowlife president by using high-minded policy papers. Fight like Jon Ossoff. You might just find that you’ll actually win.
Your friend, in defiance,
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