Jon Ossoff certainly struck a nerve. At a campaign rally on Sunday, the Democratic senator from Georgia declared that Donald Trump “doesn’t want to do the job” of president but would instead prefer to “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.” The crowd went nuts, showing how much people, at least on the left, have been noticing that Trump goes everywhere with a 35-year-old blonde aide named Natalie Harp, whom New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman has deemed his “human binky.”
The White House erupted in rage, furious that Ossoff had called out the walking security blanket provided to the president. Because there’s no way around it: Having a babysitter makes the 80-year-old president look even older and weaker than he already is. The over-the-top response revealed how sensitive Trump and his staff are about his visible aging, and how much it ties into their larger anxieties about his rapid decline.
