Jon Ossoff attacked Donald Trump’s handling of the US-Israel war on Iran in a Sunday afternoon speech in midtown Atlanta, calling it “uniquely despicable.” The Georgia senator used the rally to tie the war attack to Trump’s broader conduct and to his own campaign for re-election in Georgia in November.
Ossoff said Trump had made people pay more for everything, taken the country to war on lies, and spent most of last year trying to cover up for the world’s most famous pedophile while the crook president and his crook family raked in billions. He also said, “They’ve lied non-stop about this war like they lie about everything. And they know they’re lying, but they lie and they keep lying anyway because in this White House, they view persistence in deceit as a virtue.”
midtown Atlanta speech
The rally speech fit a pattern Ossoff has used on the trail: sharp stump speeches aimed at Trump and at the way he describes power in Washington. Ossoff has maintained a lead above the margins for error in polling above the Republican nominee, Mike Collins, and early voting begins in Georgia in eight weeks.
He said the sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln were enduring a record-setting deployment of nearly nine months, then added that Trump suggested last week that they had not been deployed nearly long enough. Ossoff also said, “While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings.”
Donald Trump and Natalie Harp
Ossoff said Trump wanted to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the amir of Qatar. The reference appears to have been to Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant, who accompanied him when he left Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent and other key officials on a decoy plane in July as they left Turkey under threat of Iranian attack.
That line sat beside Ossoff’s wider attack on corruption, including his claim that Trump was not unrigging a broken system but “re-rigging it for himself.” He also pointed to his own push for a ban on stock trading by members of US Congress and their families, and to the fact that his personal wealth is held in a blind trust.
Ending Trading and Holdings In Congressional Stocks Act
Ossoff has made that issue a signature part of his campaign, and the Ending Trading and Holdings In Congressional Stocks Act passed out of the preliminary committee stage in July 2024. The bill has not been put to a vote in the Republican-controlled US Senate, leaving Ossoff’s stock-trading push in place as he tries to separate his campaign from the usual Senate arguments.
He closed the speech by saying, “And there’s something uniquely despicable about lying a nation into war, treating citizens as fools and those who serve as pawns.” With early voting still eight weeks away in Georgia, the speech keeps Trump at the center of Ossoff’s campaign and leaves the larger question of how far that argument reaches beyond Georgia in November.
