Last edited:
US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians
- Thread starter SeniorFuckFace
- Start date
- Status
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2018
The DNC wants to use debates to wear Trump down and focus test a candidate that can push them to the margin of fraud and Trump is wise not to fall for it.
Sekirodiealot
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2019
It's why i can't wait for the election to roll around and see them loose their minds. Think they'll make good on their promise to moving to Canada like they claimed back in 2016?
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2023
oh god I hope so. then they come crawling back because life is objectively better under Trump's "Tyranny"
but they never do. they talk the talk but don't walk the walk
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2018
Those broken families will never be repaired. I know my family was broken because of the virulent rhetoric around the clot shot.
Fahrenheit451
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2024
I don't get the weird attack line. As far as im concerned, being called weird by someone who supports childhood transitioning is a bag of honor. Seriously, all people need to do is raise the mirror, and it all falls apart.
Brahma
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2019
Yeah, that's been a thing
The 2a makes the USA a superior choice to just about every alternative
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2020
Every election there are 'weird' words that come out and used heavily. Gaslighting, Dog Whistle and others from 2020. Nobody ever used them that way before. I have seen black women call cops weird when getting arrested, so I'm sure one of those types thought it would be a good idea to attack an authority figure with childish insults. Oh well.
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2015
Dems acting like mean girls in high school overall is just kind of off putting.
Technically there's a chance to claw it back before the normies notice but moderates won't care for the language either.
I do think there's a vague chance of a cult of personality working for Harris as Obama got the presidental ticket on a few good speeches. But I'm not sure Kamala could manage a good "Hope and Change" speech.
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2019
Again, remember that this is how they helped rig shit in 2020, which they bragged about doing.
Trump is being called weird by the people who don't even know what bathroom to use. Forgive me if I'm not impressed.
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2022
What strikes me about the "weird" angle of attack is just how astroturfed it is. I know that just about any attack against a political rival is gonna be astroturfed to various degrees since the campaign is going to want to promote it, but this one just sprung up out of nowhere with absolutely nothing prompting it from what I can tell, and I started seeing it fucking everywhere a day or two ago. Plus like others have pointed out, it's an incredibly weak insult. I can already picture Trump making fun of it on stage, workshopping new material on it.
If this is the best they've got with $90 million or whatever they laundered over to Kamala's campaign, then they better have a whooole lot of fraud planned for November.
If this is the best they've got with $90 million or whatever they laundered over to Kamala's campaign, then they better have a whooole lot of fraud planned for November.
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2019
On one hand, bans outside of actual woodchipper-worthy behavior (like posting CP) is gay.
On the other hand, banhappiness is the bed they made, they can lie in it.
Reminds me of people getting fired or whatever for wishing Crooks hadn't missed. Gay, but this is what you wanted. Learn some foresight, you dumb fucks.
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2019
Trump is Weird is never going to work. At all. It's a playground insult that requires Trump behave like a baboon to make it effective. He's most likely going to respond to it, if he does at all, by saying something like "And they're saying. - they're saying I'm 'weird'." (Trump exasperated face) "You know, I don't want to say it, but - if you wanna see weirdoes, go look at DC" and then people will cheer and he'll never talk about it again.
This is because their entire argument is hinged upon pretending that the babies are not actually independent life forms but a tumor growing in a woman's stomach, and so treatment of it should fall under basic medical rights. Thus, the states shouldn't have a say. Allowing the states to have a say indicates there's a conversation to be had, and if they have the conversation at all, it will always lead to concluding they are killing infants. Some people may be fine with that, but the majority of the country will always be opposed if it's framed as killing your own child.
Presidency is a real hard job. It ages people when they're in office.
She's not hot enough for anyone to want to fix her.
If your victory is getting your accounts banned, you may be on the losing side, and not actually making anyone afraid.
Ukraine is Big Gay
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2022
"Right wingers are SO WEIRD"
Leftoids: pregnantmanemoji
Leftoids: pregnantmanemoji
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2020
I never report anything, but when it happens to those I dislike I don't mourn for them either.
ETA I have to make an exception on that for Destiny. I really want him deplatformed.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2016
So years ago my girl asked me if I would ever cheat on her.
I told her I loved her, but at my heart I m a pariot, and to save america I would make a sex tap with Hilary Clinton, to save america!
Then trump happened then biden, now she asks me about Kamala
and I m like....I dont think I can, maybe if she dresses up as the wicked witch of of East...and I guess I dress up as doroth.
Trump though, I cant really see a down side to having sex with trump, I feel like that would give me clout with both trump supporters and haters
I told her I loved her, but at my heart I m a pariot, and to save america I would make a sex tap with Hilary Clinton, to save america!
Then trump happened then biden, now she asks me about Kamala
and I m like....I dont think I can, maybe if she dresses up as the wicked witch of of East...and I guess I dress up as doroth.
Trump though, I cant really see a down side to having sex with trump, I feel like that would give me clout with both trump supporters and haters
Sekirodiealot
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2019
They won't admit it cause they're so stubborn. I look forward to seeing them look back on him when the next republican president come and they go "Trump isn't bad like this new hitler. We miss uncle donny!"
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2019
Are you the pitcher or the catcher?
Dr J
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2020
I think we genuinely will see people flee this time. Not because people are butthurt that they didn't get the government they wanted, but because people like the Feds will run to avoid prosecution
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2019
Americans-"I can't afford food or rent."
Democrats-"JD Vance is weird."
That sounds like a winning strategy
Democrats-"JD Vance is weird."
That sounds like a winning strategy
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2022
Some news articles on the whole 'weird' thing.
Harris and Democrats keep calling Trump and Vance ‘weird.’ Here’s why
Associated Press (archive.ph)
By Meg Kinnard
2024-07-30 04:03:17GMT
It's getting weird: Simple insult is Democrats' latest talking point. Can it stick?
USA Today (archive.ph)
By Kinsey Crowley
2024-07-29 18:18GMT
from a couple of days ago:
How Trump and Vance went from a ‘threat to democracy’ to ‘weird’
Politico (archive.ph)
By Eli Stokols and Elena Schneider
2024-07-26 21:28:00GMT
Harris and Democrats keep calling Trump and Vance ‘weird.’ Here’s why
Associated Press (archive.ph)
By Meg Kinnard
2024-07-30 04:03:17GMT
Vice President Kamala Harris and her Democratic allies are emphasizing a new line of criticism against Republicans — branding Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as “weird.”
Democrats are applying the label with gusto in interviews and online, notably to Vance’s comments on abortion and his previous suggestion that political leaders who didn’t have biological children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.
The “weird” message appears to have given Democrats a narrative advantage that it rarely had when President Joe Biden was still running for reelection. Trump’s campaign, which so often shapes political discussions with the former president’s pronouncements, has spent days trying to flip the script by highlighting things about Democrats it says are weird.
“I don’t know who came up with the message, but I salute them,” said David Karpf, a strategic communication professor at George Washington University.
Karpf said labeling Republican comments as “weird” is the sort of concise take that resonates quickly with Harris supporters. Plus, Karpf noted, “it frustrates opponents, leading them to further amplify it through off-balance responses.”
“So far, at least, Trump-Vance has been incapable of finding an effective response,” Karpf said.
Harris and her allies have used the label frequently
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who is on Harris’ short list for vice president, called Trump and Vance “just weird” last week in an MSNBC interview, which the Democratic Governors Association — of which Walz is chair — amplified in a post on X. Walz reiterated the characterization Sunday on CNN, referencing Trump’s repeated mentions of the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film “Silence of the Lambs” in stump speeches.
Responding to Trump’s Thursday appearance on Fox News, the Harris campaign — in a news release with the subject line “Statement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance” — included “Trump is old and quite weird?” in a bulleted list of takeaways.
A day later, multiple news releases from the Harris campaign described her opponents similarly, declaring simply that “JD Vance is weird” in part due to his stances on abortion, and Harris’ campaign spokesperson saying that Vance had “spent all week making headlines for his out-of-touch, weird ideas.”
Two of Harris’ allies, Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, on Friday posted a video on X calling Vance’s past comments about limiting the political power of childless Americans “a super weird idea.”
And then, at her first fundraiser since becoming the Democrats’ likely White House nominee, Harris used the characterization herself, calling out some of Trump’s “wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying, it is just plain weird.”
“I mean that’s the box you put that in, right?” she added.
Many of Democrats’ comments appear to be allusions to a 2021 interview with Vance in which he slammed some prominent Democrats without biological children — including Harris — as “childless cat ladies” with “no direct stake” in America.
But Harris’ own characterization of Trump as “weird” may date back even further. In his 2021 book, political reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote that Harris reportedly gathered with aides in 2018 to prepare for her own presidential bid.
As staff aimed to prepare her for how she’d react if, during a debate, Trump stood over her as he did Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, Harris reportedly quipped, “‘I’d turn around and say, ‘Why are you being so weird? What’s wrong with you?’”
Trump’s campaign has tried to flip the script
On Sunday, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung posted video of Walz calling Trump and Vance “weird” as he stumped for Harris and said the likely Democratic nominee and her backers were themselves out of line for “trying to gaslight everyone into thinking the shooting was staged,” a reference to the assassination attempt at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania.
More broadly, some of Trump’s allies have angled to turn the conversation back to Harris and what they portray as her failed policy ideas.
Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s oldest son, took to X on Monday to ask, “You know what’s really weird? Soft on crime politicians like Kamala allowing illegal aliens out of prison so they can violently assault Americans.”
On Saturday, Vance reposted an X video Trump Jr. shared in which Harris talked about “climate anxiety, which is fear of the future and the unknown of whether it makes sense for you to even think about having children.”
“It’s almost like these people don’t want young people starting families or something,” Vance wrote. “Really weird stuff.”
Democrats are co-opting Republican attack lines to support Harris
Republicans have long shared clips of Harris’ laugh and some of her jokes or stories to try to make the vice president seem weird — notably an anecdote she told last year about her mother scolding her, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”
The “coconut tree” story has itself become a Democratic in-joke in the days since Harris took over the campaign. Many of her supporters have embraced coconut emojis in their online accounts.
Calling Republicans “weird” may be a way to take Republicans’ previous tactics and make them their own, said Matt Sienkiewicz, a communication professor at Boston College.
University at Buffalo political communication professor Jacob Neiheisel compared the “weird” message to Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 attempt to portray Barack Obama as a celebrity with no real accomplishments.
“At a functional level, I think that this might be part of a concerted attempt to mitigate some of the longstanding efforts on the right to paint Harris in a similar way,” Neiheisel said.
Democrats are applying the label with gusto in interviews and online, notably to Vance’s comments on abortion and his previous suggestion that political leaders who didn’t have biological children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.
The “weird” message appears to have given Democrats a narrative advantage that it rarely had when President Joe Biden was still running for reelection. Trump’s campaign, which so often shapes political discussions with the former president’s pronouncements, has spent days trying to flip the script by highlighting things about Democrats it says are weird.
“I don’t know who came up with the message, but I salute them,” said David Karpf, a strategic communication professor at George Washington University.
Karpf said labeling Republican comments as “weird” is the sort of concise take that resonates quickly with Harris supporters. Plus, Karpf noted, “it frustrates opponents, leading them to further amplify it through off-balance responses.”
“So far, at least, Trump-Vance has been incapable of finding an effective response,” Karpf said.
Harris and her allies have used the label frequently
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who is on Harris’ short list for vice president, called Trump and Vance “just weird” last week in an MSNBC interview, which the Democratic Governors Association — of which Walz is chair — amplified in a post on X. Walz reiterated the characterization Sunday on CNN, referencing Trump’s repeated mentions of the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film “Silence of the Lambs” in stump speeches.
Responding to Trump’s Thursday appearance on Fox News, the Harris campaign — in a news release with the subject line “Statement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance” — included “Trump is old and quite weird?” in a bulleted list of takeaways.
A day later, multiple news releases from the Harris campaign described her opponents similarly, declaring simply that “JD Vance is weird” in part due to his stances on abortion, and Harris’ campaign spokesperson saying that Vance had “spent all week making headlines for his out-of-touch, weird ideas.”
Two of Harris’ allies, Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, on Friday posted a video on X calling Vance’s past comments about limiting the political power of childless Americans “a super weird idea.”
And then, at her first fundraiser since becoming the Democrats’ likely White House nominee, Harris used the characterization herself, calling out some of Trump’s “wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying, it is just plain weird.”
“I mean that’s the box you put that in, right?” she added.
Many of Democrats’ comments appear to be allusions to a 2021 interview with Vance in which he slammed some prominent Democrats without biological children — including Harris — as “childless cat ladies” with “no direct stake” in America.
But Harris’ own characterization of Trump as “weird” may date back even further. In his 2021 book, political reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote that Harris reportedly gathered with aides in 2018 to prepare for her own presidential bid.
As staff aimed to prepare her for how she’d react if, during a debate, Trump stood over her as he did Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, Harris reportedly quipped, “‘I’d turn around and say, ‘Why are you being so weird? What’s wrong with you?’”
Trump’s campaign has tried to flip the script
On Sunday, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung posted video of Walz calling Trump and Vance “weird” as he stumped for Harris and said the likely Democratic nominee and her backers were themselves out of line for “trying to gaslight everyone into thinking the shooting was staged,” a reference to the assassination attempt at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania.
More broadly, some of Trump’s allies have angled to turn the conversation back to Harris and what they portray as her failed policy ideas.
Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s oldest son, took to X on Monday to ask, “You know what’s really weird? Soft on crime politicians like Kamala allowing illegal aliens out of prison so they can violently assault Americans.”
On Saturday, Vance reposted an X video Trump Jr. shared in which Harris talked about “climate anxiety, which is fear of the future and the unknown of whether it makes sense for you to even think about having children.”
“It’s almost like these people don’t want young people starting families or something,” Vance wrote. “Really weird stuff.”
Democrats are co-opting Republican attack lines to support Harris
Republicans have long shared clips of Harris’ laugh and some of her jokes or stories to try to make the vice president seem weird — notably an anecdote she told last year about her mother scolding her, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”
The “coconut tree” story has itself become a Democratic in-joke in the days since Harris took over the campaign. Many of her supporters have embraced coconut emojis in their online accounts.
Calling Republicans “weird” may be a way to take Republicans’ previous tactics and make them their own, said Matt Sienkiewicz, a communication professor at Boston College.
University at Buffalo political communication professor Jacob Neiheisel compared the “weird” message to Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 attempt to portray Barack Obama as a celebrity with no real accomplishments.
“At a functional level, I think that this might be part of a concerted attempt to mitigate some of the longstanding efforts on the right to paint Harris in a similar way,” Neiheisel said.
USA Today (archive.ph)
By Kinsey Crowley
2024-07-29 18:18GMT
The word of the political moment seems to be "weird."
It may have been unprecedented that President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race about 100 days from the election, but that isn't what has Democrats and Republicans sparring over the word "weird."
Rather, since Vice President Kamala Harris, a younger, more meme-friendly candidate has stepped in as the Democratic candidate, a host of her surrogates have started labeling her opponents Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance as weirdos.
It appears that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also reportedly under consideration for Harris' running mate, may have started this wave of attacks.
Here is what we know about how things got weird:
'A daughter of California': How a Kamala Harris presidency could shake things up
'These are weird people on the other side'
Days after Biden dropped out of the race, Walz shared a clip from an interview with MSNBC on X.
"These are weird people on the other side," Walz says in the interview. "They wanna take books away, they wanna be in your exam room, that's what it comes down to and don't, you know, get sugar-coating this, these are weird ideas. Listen to them speak, listen to how they talk about things."
The following day, the Harris campaign posted an edited video of Vance's viral remarks about Diet Mountain Dew and racism, with the caption "It's getting weird...". Since then, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and others in the Democratic Party have mirrored the message in news interviews.
Walz explained why he uses "weird" to attack Republicans in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday:
"Listen to the guy, he's talking about Hannibal Lecter, and shocking sharks, and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind, and I thought we just give him way too much credit," referring to some of the alarm bells Democrats have raised on Trump's threats to democracy. "When you just ratchet down some of the, you know the scariness or whatever, and just name it what it is...my observation on this is, have you ever seen the guy laugh?"
Republicans fight back weird allegations
Vance has weighed in on the weird comments, posting a video of Harris introducing herself with her pronouns, with the caption "JD Vance is weird."
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz also shared a video on X of Walz calling the Republican nominees weird, with the caption, "The party of gender blockers and drag shows for kids is calling us weird? Ok."
Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted on X calling the argument from Democrats "dumb & juvenile."
"This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest," the post states. "It’s also a tad ironic coming from the party that preaches 'diversity & inclusion.' Win on policy if you can, but cut the crap please."
Expert weighs in: Weird as in 'extreme, and out of step'
Political scientist and Northeastern University professor Costas Panagopoulos said labeling Republicans as weird feeds into Democrats' message that their opponents are out of touch with everyday Americans.
"When you say someone is weird, you're also reinforcing that message that they're not like you in some way, right?" Panagopoulos told USA TODAY in an interview. "It's not just their backgrounds, it's that their policy positions and views are extreme, out of step with the average person in America, and therefore different."
He also said it may have caught on so quickly because it is a simple word that people use in their everyday lives, a tactic Trump has used in his attacks against opponents.
Panagopoulos said relying on "weird" as an attack word could come across as "petty and unsophisticated," but it also could lose its punch quickly.
"The shine of this terminology could start to fade if both sides are using the same word to, you know, attack each other," he said. "That suggests that, while it might be effective right now, that its effectiveness could deteriorate over the course of a campaign, and perhaps even quite quickly."
It may have been unprecedented that President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race about 100 days from the election, but that isn't what has Democrats and Republicans sparring over the word "weird."
Rather, since Vice President Kamala Harris, a younger, more meme-friendly candidate has stepped in as the Democratic candidate, a host of her surrogates have started labeling her opponents Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance as weirdos.
It appears that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also reportedly under consideration for Harris' running mate, may have started this wave of attacks.
Here is what we know about how things got weird:
'A daughter of California': How a Kamala Harris presidency could shake things up
'These are weird people on the other side'
Days after Biden dropped out of the race, Walz shared a clip from an interview with MSNBC on X.
"These are weird people on the other side," Walz says in the interview. "They wanna take books away, they wanna be in your exam room, that's what it comes down to and don't, you know, get sugar-coating this, these are weird ideas. Listen to them speak, listen to how they talk about things."
The following day, the Harris campaign posted an edited video of Vance's viral remarks about Diet Mountain Dew and racism, with the caption "It's getting weird...". Since then, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and others in the Democratic Party have mirrored the message in news interviews.
Walz explained why he uses "weird" to attack Republicans in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday:
"Listen to the guy, he's talking about Hannibal Lecter, and shocking sharks, and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind, and I thought we just give him way too much credit," referring to some of the alarm bells Democrats have raised on Trump's threats to democracy. "When you just ratchet down some of the, you know the scariness or whatever, and just name it what it is...my observation on this is, have you ever seen the guy laugh?"
Republicans fight back weird allegations
Vance has weighed in on the weird comments, posting a video of Harris introducing herself with her pronouns, with the caption "JD Vance is weird."
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz also shared a video on X of Walz calling the Republican nominees weird, with the caption, "The party of gender blockers and drag shows for kids is calling us weird? Ok."
Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted on X calling the argument from Democrats "dumb & juvenile."
"This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest," the post states. "It’s also a tad ironic coming from the party that preaches 'diversity & inclusion.' Win on policy if you can, but cut the crap please."
Expert weighs in: Weird as in 'extreme, and out of step'
Political scientist and Northeastern University professor Costas Panagopoulos said labeling Republicans as weird feeds into Democrats' message that their opponents are out of touch with everyday Americans.
"When you say someone is weird, you're also reinforcing that message that they're not like you in some way, right?" Panagopoulos told USA TODAY in an interview. "It's not just their backgrounds, it's that their policy positions and views are extreme, out of step with the average person in America, and therefore different."
He also said it may have caught on so quickly because it is a simple word that people use in their everyday lives, a tactic Trump has used in his attacks against opponents.
Panagopoulos said relying on "weird" as an attack word could come across as "petty and unsophisticated," but it also could lose its punch quickly.
"The shine of this terminology could start to fade if both sides are using the same word to, you know, attack each other," he said. "That suggests that, while it might be effective right now, that its effectiveness could deteriorate over the course of a campaign, and perhaps even quite quickly."
How Trump and Vance went from a ‘threat to democracy’ to ‘weird’
Politico (archive.ph)
By Eli Stokols and Elena Schneider
2024-07-26 21:28:00GMT
In the days since Vice President Kamala Harris has taken over the campaign against former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, Democrats are leaning into a new attack line against the Republican ticket: that they’re just really weird.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz , a potential Harris running mate who’s been using this description for months, said it during his first viral TV appearance of the week, and then in others. The Democratic Governors Association, which Walz leads, amplified it on social media. And the Harris campaign has adopted it as well, incorporating the label repeatedly this week in press releases and posts on X and TikTok.
As this simple and quintessentially Midwestern description of Trump and Vance catches on, it marks a notable rhetorical shift — away from Biden’s apocalyptic, high-minded messaging toward a more gut-level vernacular that may better capture how many voters react to far-right rhetoric of the kind Vance in particular trades in.
“It perfectly describes the uneasiness people feel. It’s how people who don’t live and breathe politics every day react to hearing the Republican vice presidential candidate denigrate people without children,” said Tim Hogan, a Democratic strategist who worked on the 2020 presidential campaign of another Minnesotan, Sen. Amy Klobuchar. “It’s simple. It’s how you might talk to your neighbor about the crazy political climate we’re living in.”
Walz’s post of his interview clip on X — captioned: “I’m telling you: these guys are weird.” — had 4.6 million views as of Friday afternoon. And when the Harris campaign sent out a memo on Thursday responding to Trump, or what they described as “a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance,” they included this among a list of takeaways: “Trump is old and quite weird?”
And on Friday, the Harris campaign used the term in multiple press releases. One focused on Vance’s anti-abortion stance, which called him “creepy” in the subject line, began with a simple declaration: “JD Vance is weird.” That followed another release highlighting negative coverage of Trump’s running mate in which Harris campaign spokesperson Serafina Chitika asserted that Vance had “spent all week making headlines for his out-of-touch, weird ideas.”
And others are picking up the cues. Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) posted a video on X reacting to Vance’s past comments about limiting the political power of Americans who don’t have children, which Murphy called “a super weird idea.” Schatz then chimed in to underscore the point: “It’s quite weird, but it’s also offensive.”
Harris replacing President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket has rejuvenated the party, triggering an avalanche of enthusiasm, endorsements and energy around a more competitive candidate. And as her campaign apparatus reshapes itself to adapt to her profile, it is adjusting its messaging strategy using the template Walz and others have provided — to talk about Trump and Vance in a different, more relatable way.
“Joe Biden, president of the United States and 81-year-old man, can’t authentically call his opposition ‘weird.’ And his campaign’s tone reflected his,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, a progressive group that recruits young people to run for office. “It’s definitely a younger [tone], but I think it’s more about being free from the obligation to speak in Biden’s voice.”
Biden and his senior adviser Mike Donilon, who conceptualized nearly every one of Biden’s TV ads, both believed deeply in making the issue of democracy a central theme of the campaign. But the president’s remarks on the subject often featured a grave tone and a heaviness that, more than three years after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the country had seemingly tuned out. Polls showed voters rated Biden and Trump roughly evenly on questions of which candidate would be better to protect democracy.
Suddenly, there’s no more talk of “inflection points” or saving “the soul of the nation.” No exhortations from on high to “meet this moment of national and generational importance.”
The Harris campaign’s first digital video, released Thursday, featured a Beyoncé soundtrack and a more subtle tweak to the democracy message that had been central to Biden’s vision, reframed around a more optimistic vision of freedom. And in her own speeches since taking over, she has cast Trump through her own lens, referencing her career as a prosecutor who’s taken on perpetrators of matching transgressions: “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said on Monday during remarks at her campaign’s Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters. “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
That more relaxed, more conversational approach to describing Trump mirrors the way Walz and others have successfully attacked the former president and other Republican candidates who’ve made themselves in his image, defining them as outside the bounds of normalcy.
During the 2022 midterms, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who is, like Walz, being vetted by Harris’ team as a potential running mate, summed up his GOP challenger, Blake Masters, with one devastating debate line.
“I think we all know guys like this,” Kelly said of Masters. “You know, guys that think they know better than everyone about everything. You know, you think you know better than women and doctors about abortion. You even think you know better than seniors about Social Security.”
Describing Trump and Vance as “weird” also serves as something of a catch-all, given the former president’s penchant for vicious personal attacks, incendiary language and off-topic riffs about Hannibal Lecter, shower head pressure and the comparative dangers of electric boats and sharks. It allows Democrats to characterize Vance’s own controversial statements about “childless cat ladies” — and to even nod at other, stranger memes shooting around the internet — without going into the details or even referencing them directly.
Indeed, Vance’s “childless cat ladies” drew a rebuke from actress Jennifer Aniston, who rarely weighs in on politics.
“Using new words gets people’s attention. [It’s] so easy to tune out the political language,” said Democratic strategist Martha McKenna. The “weird” label, she added, fits not just the candidates but the broader MAGA movement. “It’s the first word that came to mind when I saw the white bandages on the ears of delegates at the RNC: ‘That’s weird.’”
Tagging MAGA as “weird” started for Walz during a series of keynote speeches at state party dinners in Kansas, Indiana, Nebraska and North Dakota, where the description drew big laughs and knowing nods from Midwesterners, according to one of the governor’s aides. He first used the term with the press in an interview with POLITICO eight months ago as he took over as chair of the Democratic Governors Association.
But it was his appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, which was watched with heightened interest given Harris’ reported interest in him as a potential running mate, where the line really caught his party’s attention.
“These guys are just weird,” the former school teacher said, drawing audible chuckles from an off-air Joe Scarborough. “They’re running for, like, ‘He-Man Women Hater’s Club’ or something. That’s what they’re doing. That’s not what people are interested in.”
Hours later during another MSNBC appearance, Walz said it again. “These are weird people on the other side,” he said. “They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room. That’s what it comes down to. Don’t go sugarcoating this — these are weird ideas.”
It’s a natural one-liner for a politician who, before running for Congress in the Democratic wave years of 2006, spent his career inside a school cafeteria and on a high school football field. Beyond his suburban dad energy, Walz’s description of MAGA Republicans, ironically enough, carries the same cutting simplicity and plain-spokenness as some of Trump’s most effective barbs and opponent-defining nicknames.
The DGA under Walz has recently trotted out ‘weird’ in its TikToks, fundraising emails and even created a graphic with the quote for social media posts. An SMS message this week featuring the “weird” quote is already the organization’s best performing text from the Minnesota governor.
Litman, the Run for Something co-founder, argued it’s a more effective messaging strategy: “People understand ‘weird’ more intuitively than, say, ‘threat to democracy.’”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz , a potential Harris running mate who’s been using this description for months, said it during his first viral TV appearance of the week, and then in others. The Democratic Governors Association, which Walz leads, amplified it on social media. And the Harris campaign has adopted it as well, incorporating the label repeatedly this week in press releases and posts on X and TikTok.
As this simple and quintessentially Midwestern description of Trump and Vance catches on, it marks a notable rhetorical shift — away from Biden’s apocalyptic, high-minded messaging toward a more gut-level vernacular that may better capture how many voters react to far-right rhetoric of the kind Vance in particular trades in.
“It perfectly describes the uneasiness people feel. It’s how people who don’t live and breathe politics every day react to hearing the Republican vice presidential candidate denigrate people without children,” said Tim Hogan, a Democratic strategist who worked on the 2020 presidential campaign of another Minnesotan, Sen. Amy Klobuchar. “It’s simple. It’s how you might talk to your neighbor about the crazy political climate we’re living in.”
Walz’s post of his interview clip on X — captioned: “I’m telling you: these guys are weird.” — had 4.6 million views as of Friday afternoon. And when the Harris campaign sent out a memo on Thursday responding to Trump, or what they described as “a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance,” they included this among a list of takeaways: “Trump is old and quite weird?”
And on Friday, the Harris campaign used the term in multiple press releases. One focused on Vance’s anti-abortion stance, which called him “creepy” in the subject line, began with a simple declaration: “JD Vance is weird.” That followed another release highlighting negative coverage of Trump’s running mate in which Harris campaign spokesperson Serafina Chitika asserted that Vance had “spent all week making headlines for his out-of-touch, weird ideas.”
And others are picking up the cues. Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) posted a video on X reacting to Vance’s past comments about limiting the political power of Americans who don’t have children, which Murphy called “a super weird idea.” Schatz then chimed in to underscore the point: “It’s quite weird, but it’s also offensive.”
Harris replacing President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket has rejuvenated the party, triggering an avalanche of enthusiasm, endorsements and energy around a more competitive candidate. And as her campaign apparatus reshapes itself to adapt to her profile, it is adjusting its messaging strategy using the template Walz and others have provided — to talk about Trump and Vance in a different, more relatable way.
“Joe Biden, president of the United States and 81-year-old man, can’t authentically call his opposition ‘weird.’ And his campaign’s tone reflected his,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, a progressive group that recruits young people to run for office. “It’s definitely a younger [tone], but I think it’s more about being free from the obligation to speak in Biden’s voice.”
Biden and his senior adviser Mike Donilon, who conceptualized nearly every one of Biden’s TV ads, both believed deeply in making the issue of democracy a central theme of the campaign. But the president’s remarks on the subject often featured a grave tone and a heaviness that, more than three years after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the country had seemingly tuned out. Polls showed voters rated Biden and Trump roughly evenly on questions of which candidate would be better to protect democracy.
Suddenly, there’s no more talk of “inflection points” or saving “the soul of the nation.” No exhortations from on high to “meet this moment of national and generational importance.”
The Harris campaign’s first digital video, released Thursday, featured a Beyoncé soundtrack and a more subtle tweak to the democracy message that had been central to Biden’s vision, reframed around a more optimistic vision of freedom. And in her own speeches since taking over, she has cast Trump through her own lens, referencing her career as a prosecutor who’s taken on perpetrators of matching transgressions: “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said on Monday during remarks at her campaign’s Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters. “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
That more relaxed, more conversational approach to describing Trump mirrors the way Walz and others have successfully attacked the former president and other Republican candidates who’ve made themselves in his image, defining them as outside the bounds of normalcy.
During the 2022 midterms, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who is, like Walz, being vetted by Harris’ team as a potential running mate, summed up his GOP challenger, Blake Masters, with one devastating debate line.
“I think we all know guys like this,” Kelly said of Masters. “You know, guys that think they know better than everyone about everything. You know, you think you know better than women and doctors about abortion. You even think you know better than seniors about Social Security.”
Describing Trump and Vance as “weird” also serves as something of a catch-all, given the former president’s penchant for vicious personal attacks, incendiary language and off-topic riffs about Hannibal Lecter, shower head pressure and the comparative dangers of electric boats and sharks. It allows Democrats to characterize Vance’s own controversial statements about “childless cat ladies” — and to even nod at other, stranger memes shooting around the internet — without going into the details or even referencing them directly.
Indeed, Vance’s “childless cat ladies” drew a rebuke from actress Jennifer Aniston, who rarely weighs in on politics.
“Using new words gets people’s attention. [It’s] so easy to tune out the political language,” said Democratic strategist Martha McKenna. The “weird” label, she added, fits not just the candidates but the broader MAGA movement. “It’s the first word that came to mind when I saw the white bandages on the ears of delegates at the RNC: ‘That’s weird.’”
Tagging MAGA as “weird” started for Walz during a series of keynote speeches at state party dinners in Kansas, Indiana, Nebraska and North Dakota, where the description drew big laughs and knowing nods from Midwesterners, according to one of the governor’s aides. He first used the term with the press in an interview with POLITICO eight months ago as he took over as chair of the Democratic Governors Association.
But it was his appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, which was watched with heightened interest given Harris’ reported interest in him as a potential running mate, where the line really caught his party’s attention.
“These guys are just weird,” the former school teacher said, drawing audible chuckles from an off-air Joe Scarborough. “They’re running for, like, ‘He-Man Women Hater’s Club’ or something. That’s what they’re doing. That’s not what people are interested in.”
Hours later during another MSNBC appearance, Walz said it again. “These are weird people on the other side,” he said. “They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room. That’s what it comes down to. Don’t go sugarcoating this — these are weird ideas.”
It’s a natural one-liner for a politician who, before running for Congress in the Democratic wave years of 2006, spent his career inside a school cafeteria and on a high school football field. Beyond his suburban dad energy, Walz’s description of MAGA Republicans, ironically enough, carries the same cutting simplicity and plain-spokenness as some of Trump’s most effective barbs and opponent-defining nicknames.
The DGA under Walz has recently trotted out ‘weird’ in its TikToks, fundraising emails and even created a graphic with the quote for social media posts. An SMS message this week featuring the “weird” quote is already the organization’s best performing text from the Minnesota governor.
Litman, the Run for Something co-founder, argued it’s a more effective messaging strategy: “People understand ‘weird’ more intuitively than, say, ‘threat to democracy.’”
- Status