CNN commentator Scott Jennings faced pushback on Wednesday’s episode of NewsNight, where fellow panelists accused him of manufacturing outrage over remarks Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff made about White House aide Natalie Harp.
Ossoff, taking aim at Trump on Sunday, said the president appeared “less interested” in doing the job and more eager to “travel with” his 35-year-old executive assistant “to their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
Jennings argued that the comment unfairly dragged Harp, whom he described as largely unknown to the public, into a national political fight.
“She’s not a household name, nobody knows who she is, and when he injected her into this, he knew what he was doing, which is punching down on someone who’s effectively defenseless,” Jennings said.
ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams quickly challenged that line of criticism, asking: “Doesn’t Donald Trump do that all the time?”
Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz was even more forceful, arguing that Trump had already “broke all the rules” when he celebrated longtime critic Rob Reiner following the director’s death late last year.
“What I find amazing is that the best trolls can’t take incoming. I don’t care who they are,” Moskowitz said. Jennings immediately pushed back, asking, “Is she a troll?” in reference to Harp.
The exchange quickly grew heated, with Jennings and Moskowitz talking over each other as the CNN NewsNight panel tried to unpack the controversy.
It was Scott Jennings versus everyone on Wednesday’s edition of CNN NewsNight, after the conservative claimed Donald Trump’s 35-year-old executive assistant was being unfairly thrust into the public eye
Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, while criticizing Trump Sunday, said the president was ‘less interested’ in his job and would rather ‘travel with’ the young White House aide
Moskowitz maintained, ‘No, but Trump is.’
Jennings, shouting over his co-panelist, framed Harp as a ‘female who can’t defend herself.’
‘She’s a White House staff member,’ former Bill Clinton aide Keith Boykin blurted out.
‘It’s a single defenseless woman,’ said Jennings.
The crosstalk grew so chaotic that host Abby Phillip – also the show’s moderator – felt the need to jump in.
‘Hold on a sec,’ she repeated several times with a smile.
Moskowitz, meanwhile, shouted that whenever CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins ‘asks a real question’ President Trump ‘demeans her every single solitary day.’
Phillip then cued a sequence of clips she felt opposed Jennings’ argument, framing it as evidence of ‘Trump punching down on women.’
The crosstalk grew so chaotic at a point that host Abby Phillip got involved. Jennings said he felt the senator was ‘demeaning women’ and ‘knew exactly what he was doing’
Joining her guests against Jennings, the host played a clip of Trump demeaning women. She framed the Republican as a hypocrite while others accused him of being ‘dishonest’
Included was Trump acknowledging to Megyn Kelly his belief that Rosie O’Donnell was a ‘disgusting animal’ during the first Republican presidential primary in 2015 and slamming Hillary Clinton as ‘a nasty woman’ on a different debate stage the following year.
The footage was rounded out by Trump telling Kaitlan Collins to ‘smile’ in February and Bloomberg’s White House correspondent Catherine Lucey to ‘Quiet, piggy,’ this past November.
‘Quiet, piggy,’ Phillip emphasized. ‘I mean, Scott. Dan’s question was pretty straightforward. If you’re going to be outraged over traveling on a plane with Natalie, are you going to be outraged over all those things?’
Harp – Trump’s personal assistant since 2022 – began making headlines several days before being named in Ossoff’s speech, after a Washington Post report pegged her as one of the few allowed on a secret flight with the President out of Turkey last month amid an Iranian assassination threat.
‘I do not believe in demeaning women in any way. Number one,’ Jennings shot back.
A Politico report the following day claimed Jennings sent clips of his recent on-air Harp defenses to the White House in a bid to succeed outgoing Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
As he got to ‘number two’, Phillip and others repeatedly urged him to answer her question. Jennings refused.
‘By the way, you don’t know how loud this is,’ he said, referring to pushback from Boykin.
‘You have no idea how dishonest you are,’ the former Clinton aide proclaimed.
As Jennings urged fellow conservative Lydia Moynihan to get involved, Phillip again took over.
‘Just to be clear, I think the idea of continually describing a 35-year-old woman as somebody who has no agency and is defenseless and is just a victim, that is kind of demeaning,’ she said.
The exchange ended shortly thereafter.
The day before, CNN’s Erin Burnett hosted Harp’s estranged brother Preston Harp on her show ‘OutFront.’
Preston framed his sister’s relationship with Trump as a ‘unhealthy obsession,’ after CNN reported she jumped into an SUV trunk just to accompany Trump to a New York federal court building in 2023.
The Post report sparked questions about Trump’s closeness with the staffer, enough so that The New York Times profiled her on Tuesday.
Her devotion to Trump has remained consistent throughout the years despite attempts by his inner circle to distance her from the President, according to the Times and CNN.
