CNN has gone all-in on attacking White House executive assistant Natalie Harp after Sen. Jon Ossoff dragged her into a political speech by name, and the result is some of the cheapest character assassination in recent memory.

During a Sunday event in Atlanta, Ossoff suggested President Trump cared more about building a ballroom and traveling with Harp than doing his job, while American sailors remained deployed on the USS Abraham Lincoln. It was a deliberate insinuation. White House officials hit back hard, and Trump dismissed the senator’s antics. That should have been the end of it.

Instead, CNN’s Kristen Holmes pressed the issue in the Oval Office, and the network then hauled out Harp’s estranged brother to comment on a report that she once climbed into the trunk of a motorcade SUV when no seats were left. He called it an “unhealthy obsession.” The clear goal is to paint a dedicated staffer as some kind of Fatal Attraction figure with an improper relationship to the president—without evidence, without restraint, and without any regard for the human cost.

This is not tough journalism. It is low. It is personal. It does not just target a private aide who works long hours out of the spotlight; it drags the families of both Natalie Harp and President Trump into the mud for political points. Even by the standards of the left-wing media and Democratic attack politics, this crosses a line. Going after someone’s loyalty, inventing scandal, and using family members as props is the kind of behavior that makes decent people want nothing to do with public life.

Harp is not a cable-news celebrity chasing book deals or cameras. By all accounts she is a hard-working aide who believes in the president she serves. For that crime, the usual suspects have decided she must be destroyed—and they are willing to trash two families in the process.