A top Democratic strategist from the Obama White House contended that Sen. Jon Ossoff’s latest shot at President Donald Trump was “gratuitous and unnecessary.”
The Georgia Democrat, who has expanded his profile throughout his re-election campaign during this midterm cycle to new heights that have him in the conversation for the 2028 presidential race, recently went viral for his remarks while on the trail, where he went after Trump.
Ossoff was blasting Trump for the war in Iran and the record-breaking deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East when the lawmaker pivoted to a new foe: the president’s executive assistant, Natalie Harp.
“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,” Ossoff said.
“So, 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.”
The comment received strong pushback from Trump, his allies and family and Ossoff’s opponent, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga.
But it also drew the ire of a major figure in the Democratic Party: David Axelrod, who was a key player in getting former President Barack Obama elected for two terms and served as his senior advisor.
While Axelrod applauded Ossoff’s previous “eloquent or incisive” attacks against Trump, he warned that mentioning Harp may not have been warranted.
“The paragraph from his weekend speech that has gotten so much attention was a brutal takedown,” Axelrod said on X. “But two words in it, ‘with Natalie,’ seemed gratuitous and unnecessary.”
He contended the Ossoff campaign likely “juiced the virality” of the clip, which so far has over 6 million views on X, and that it “probably thrilled some in the base, who figured it was just giving Trump a taste of his own nasty medicine.”
“But they distracted and detracted from the power of the message,” Axelrod contended.
