There’s more to the Georgia senator than a controversial barb about one of Donald Trump’s aides. Some say he could be the next US presidentAmid a controversy ignited by one of his remarks, Democratic senator Jon Ossoff is being talked about as a potential future president of the United States. Photograph: Finn Gomez/Getty Images Fri Aug 21 2026 - 07:43 • 7 MIN READAmong those likely to have scanned the new Emerson poll surveying hypothetical 2028 presidential matchups were the office staffers of embattled vice-president JD Vance. The results must have made for grim reading, as they forecast the end of their boss’s stay in the White House. The poll showed Vance, the putative Republican successor to Trump, trailing oft-touted Democrat possibilities Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and even Kamala Harris in a notional election vote. There will be 1,001 more polls between now and the actual election. But this one was notable in that it included a new contender to the stable of Democratic possibilities as the party continues its ill-defined talent search for the Democrat most likely to win in two years time: Jon Ossoff.If this is the political age of the viral clip, then the Georgia senator, currently locked into a bitter state midterm campaign to return to Congress, has proven himself a master of the form. He is the reason global broadcast news and columns have suddenly been filled with detailed profiles of Natalie Harp, the hitherto obscure White House aide to president Donald Trump. At a rally in Atlanta last Sunday, Ossoff, in a half-hour skewering of both the sitting president and the administration, dropped this observation into his speech:“See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”He was alluding to the fact Harp was among the very few who travelled with the president on the “decoy” plane used as the US delegation departed the Nato summit in Turkey last month. Something about that sentence cut like a laser beam through the political cant. Even Democratic strategists were queasy about the reference, with David Axelrod, former chief adviser to Barack Obama, noting that although Ossoff had been peerless in his prosecution of Trump’s shortcomings, referencing Harp by name “seemed gratuitous and unnecessary”.The Republican commentariat was incensed by the employment of the staffer’s first name, which instantly ignited a blaze of salacious conjecture on Harp’s role in the White House. Republican grandee Newt Gingrich called on Ossoff to apologise for “misogynistic language diminishing and smearing someone who is simply doing their job”. Scott Jennings, the Republican strategist and commentator frequently mentioned as a possible inheritor of Karoline Leavitt’s soon-to-be vacant White House press secretary role, wrote: “This is quite the message for the Democratic Party to send to young women working in politics. Party of women? Pretty ugly stuff.” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, sought to elevate the rhetoric by jumping online to issue this rebuke via social media: “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics. Instead of denigrating hard working people serving their country, Jon should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he’s a miserable person who hates this country. It’s because he’s a radical, extremist Dumocrat.”In his next public appearance, Ossoff clearly had no intention of asking himself any such thing and appeared far from miserable. He was unrepentant about his remark, instead doubling down in an interview with MNS on Wednesday.“It’s been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week. And about Natalie Harp – these White House staffers are adults; public officials paid by the tax payer with immense power in positions of public trust. And whether it is Natalie Harp printing out Donald Trump’s daily dose of delusion and flattery, or Peter Navarro steering tax payer funded loans to Trump family investments, or Pete Hegseth deluding the president daily into deepening this quagmire in the Middle East … no one cares about their feelings.”White House aide Natalie Harp was cast suddenly into the spotlight by Jon Ossoff's remark about Donald Trump's priorities. Photograph: Doug Mills/The New York Times