BS BULLETIN
- Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown publicly referred to White House aide Natalie Harp as President Trump’s “side piece” Wednesday.
- Brown offered no evidence in the post of a sexual relationship between Trump and Harp; her remark came amid a media frenzy sparked by Sen. Jon Ossoff’s suggestive reference to the aide.
- Brown defended the remark by pointing to Trump’s own insults toward female journalists — effectively arguing that Trump’s rhetoric justified her description of Harp.
Well, that escalated quickly.
What began as a suggestive crack from Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff about President Donald Trump and White House aide Natalie Harp has now graduated into an award-winning journalist publicly branding Harp the president’s “side piece.”
Julie K. Brown is an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald whose reporting on Jeffrey Epstein earned national acclaim and helped bring renewed scrutiny to Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.
On Wednesday, Brown posted this on X: “None of these people defending Trump’s side piece seemed to have any issue with Trump calling female reporters ‘piggy’ and ‘hag.’”
Trump’s “side piece.” There isn’t much ambiguity there. And if Brown possesses reporting establishing that President Trump and Natalie Harp are engaged in a sexual relationship, perhaps now would be an excellent time for an investigative reporter to do some investigating and publish it. Otherwise, what exactly are we doing here?
Because the available reporting establishes that Harp is an unusually close and influential Trump aide. She travels with the president, manages his social-media material, controls much of the information placed before him and has been described as an intensely loyal gatekeeper. There has also been reporting about extraordinarily devoted letters Harp allegedly wrote Trump, including one saying he was “all that matters to me.”
Those are legitimate subjects for journalism. What they don’t establish is that Natalie Harp is Donald Trump’s mistress.
Yet somehow we’ve made the journey from questions about a White House aide’s influence to an accomplished female journalist publicly reducing another professional woman to somebody’s “side piece.” And we got there remarkably fast.
The latest media obsession began Sunday when Ossoff attacked Trump during a campaign rally, saying the president would rather “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie” than attend to presidential responsibilities. Axios reports that the remark was “widely interpreted as insinuating that their relationship goes beyond work.” The controversy has since mushroomed into a larger Democratic debate about whether candidates should fight Trump using Trump’s own aggressive, personal style.
Ossoff himself subsequently offered a less salacious explanation, saying aides such as Harp function as Trump’s “security blanket” and accusing them of telling the president what he wants to hear instead of what he needs to hear. Fair enough. That’s politics. Argue that she’s too influential. Argue that Trump relies on her too heavily. Investigate her access. Investigate the information she gives the president. Investigate whether White House procedures are being circumvented.
But apparently that wasn’t spicy enough.
So now she’s the “side piece.”
And Brown’s justification is particularly fascinating. Trump has insulted female reporters, therefore people defending Harp shouldn’t complain when Brown describes Harp this way. Wait. What?
If Trump’s treatment of women is objectionable, wouldn’t the appropriate journalistic response be to maintain a higher standard? Instead, we’ve apparently arrived at the new ethical principle:
Donald Trump called a woman something nasty, therefore I may publicly suggest that another woman is sleeping with him. Feminism has certainly become complicated.
Brown is not some random political bomb-thrower. Her work investigating Epstein helped expose how powerful institutions failed vulnerable women and girls. That’s precisely why this remark stands out so dramatically. Mediaite called her “one of the more acclaimed journalists in America” while reporting the comment.
Which makes the standard worth examining. If a conservative journalist publicly described a prominent female aide to Barack Obama or Joe Biden as the president’s “side piece” without producing evidence of an affair, what would happen?
Would the reaction be: “Ha! Good one!”
Come now. We’d get dissertations about misogyny. The journalist’s employer would be pressured for a response. Every professional association imaginable would suddenly rediscover its code of ethics. And the woman’s professional accomplishments would become Exhibit A in a weeklong national discussion about the degrading treatment of women in politics.
Natalie Harp, however, works for Donald Trump. Different rulebook.
The pile-on has become especially noticeable because Harp herself isn’t a candidate. She’s a 35-year-old executive assistant working in the White House. Yet in a matter of days she has become an object of intense national fascination, with stories examining her relationship with Trump, her family, her personal correspondence, her movements around the president and her influence inside the administration.
Some of that scrutiny comes with working at the highest levels of government. But calling her the president’s “side piece” isn’t scrutiny. It’s an allegation wrapped in a punchline. And if you’re going to make that allegation while carrying the title “investigative reporter,” there’s a rather old-fashioned journalistic tradition that should accompany it.
Evidence.
