by Hell, Donald Trump is weird, isn’t he? It’s funny to say it now, after we’ve spent the last eight years really caring about him, treating him like a legitimate politician, and in many cases fearing what he might do next. Calling him “weird” seems like the understatement of the century – so why is he and his supporters going so far?
If you haven’t heard, the current line of attack against Republicans is as clever as it is basic – simply pointing out that Trump, and “Trumpism” as a concept, are at their core “weird”.
What does that mean? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like: pointing out that he says weird things. That his defenders are the smartest bunch of weirdos. That it looks, acts, and sounds strange. Democrats have been prominently selling the line in interviews, and the Harris campaign even put out a press release calling Trump “old and weird.”
The angle has a lot of traction because it’s undeniably true – “Trump Republicans” are a lot weirder than your regular bread-and-butter conservatives. That may have been an asset at some point – people revolted against Hillary Clinton precisely because they wanted to “shake up the system” by appointing an outsider – but now the desire to normal boring politics back, and it’s “weird”. no longer the virtue it once was.
You wouldn’t think that a political movement built on insults, lies and obfuscation would be given so much respect with such a simple name, but it really seems to be working. Republican-presidential-hopeful-turned-Trump-cheerleader Vivek Ramaswamy went on the defense last week, calling the argument “dumb & juvenile” — as if his boss hadn’t once mocked a disabled reporter by demonstrating do it during a campaign. speech
Senator Marco Rubio tried to turn it around, allegedly saying: “They called us weird so I’ll call them weirder”, but that doesn’t really work when the leader of your opposing party is an attorney, and the leader of party. he won’t stop bringing up Hannibal Lecter at his rallies for some reason.
The tactic was spearheaded by Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who summed up his position in an interview with MSNBC: “They want to take books out. They want to be in your exam room. That’s it’s about it. Don’t sugar coat this.. these are weird ideas.
As a former school teacher, Walz is probably familiar with the damaging effects of being called “weird” – it’s just the worst thing one kid can say to another. As a former queer kid, I can attest that there is nothing worse than being ostracized for your queerness – it is, at its core, an attack on all the little identities that make up your unique identity.
Of course, while many of us grow out of that mindset at some point, and learn to embrace our weirdness, the entire Republican project is built on the assumption of normalcy. “We are the group within – it’s strange that we don’t look, act or worship like us.” They say they want to bring back a nostalgia-fueled white picket fence version of America where you can leave your door unlocked and the kids respect it. Of course, that’s hard to do when your last president nominated a running mate who can’t stop insulting single women as “cat ladies without children”.
Seriously, how do you defend against name calling when that’s all you’ve done for the past eight years? Donald Trump has used so many nicknames to describe his political and ideological opponents that they have their own Wikipedia page.
They range from the baffling (calling 5ft 7in Michael Bloomberg “Mini Mike”), to the offensive (calling Elizabath Warren “Pocahontas” after she claimed she had Native American ancestry), to the – I’m not too big to acknowledge it. – really funny (“Ron DeSanctimonious” comes to mind). He is a high school bully who doesn’t know what to do when his victims stand up to him.
Some have pointed out that the word “weird” does not fully encompass the horrors that Trump has inflicted on the world over the past decade. Certainly better descriptors could be “racist”; “sexual”; even “bad”?
But the fact is that people have been calling him and his supporters all those things, and more, since he entered the political arena. All of those terms have such subjective feelings that they’ve become meaningless – “fascist” is just a synonym for “someone I don’t like” at this point, even when it’s an accurate descriptor. “Weird”, in contrast, is not emotional at all – it’s just a negative statement of fact.
You can not argue that these guys and their supporters are strange. Even if you generally agree with their positions, you can’t deny that they approach them in a strange way. Pedaling conspiracy theories, non-stop about “the LGBT+ agenda”, spewing an endless stream of weird insults – only a total weirdo would fall in with a crowd like that. You don’t want to be a weirdo, do you?
If you doubt the effectiveness of this strategy, consider that something similar happened here in the UK. Although Labor did not go on the attack, which clearly showed how strange the Tories were by the end of their 14 years in power, it was certainly a huge undercurrent to their campaign. Keir Starmer did a great job of presenting Labor as the “boring, back-to-basics” party, while Sunak was busy dealing with people like Suella Braverman saying weird things, saying things that weren’t involving the voters.
Republicans have clearly banked on the old Michelle Obama “when they go low, we’ll go high” from their opponents, and they clearly have no strategy when the Democrats inevitably decide to go low as well. They have no defense against strange accusations, and any attempt to aggravate it results in still more strangeness.
I’m glad the Democrats have found an effective way to fight back. It’s strange that it took them this long to do it.
