Kamala calls Trump “weird” - goodbye ‘tough guy’ image, nothing cuts deeper than scorn
Popping a windbag
The Harris campaign is calling Trump “old and weird.” It is a masterstroke. Nothing punctures the over-inflated ego of a toxic narcissist quicker than being thought of as a lumbering oddball. The strategy has legs. Trump compulsively provides evidence he is a nutter. And JD Vance is a gaffe machine.
On Thursday, Kamala’s team issued a press release, “Statement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance.” The headline alone is worth the price of admission. But they were just getting started. It began:
“After watching Fox News this morning we only have one question, is Donald Trump OK?”
That is genius rhetoric. You pose a question to suggest a weakness — without actually taking a position. It gives the respondent a sense of accomplishment when they get the answer ‘right.’ It is a favorite go-to of Fox News and Tucker Carlson — “I’m just asking questions.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the Harris campaign layered in, “people are saying …“
The statement goes on to say:
“Trump praised his Project 2025; Trump is flustered and lashing out; When Trump wasn’t lying, he was making threats; Abortion bans are good. Mail-in voting is bad…”
[Trump] Praised dictators because he wants to be one; Trump is clearly worried he made the wrong pick in JD Vance; Trump is old and quite weird. This guy shouldn’t be president ever again.”
My favorite phrase is “old and quite weird.” (although I would strike the “quite.” Modifiers often make your writing flabby — just call him weird.)
The Harris campaign has not limited itself to Trump. His “who knew he was this demented” sidekick gets a dose of truth.
On Friday, they sent out an email saying: “J.D. Vance Is a Creep (Who Wants to Ban Abortion Nationwide),” adding that “Vance is weird. Voters know it — Vance is the most unpopular VP pick in decades.”
The Harris people are on the to something. Trump is desperate to present himself as a virile man exuding youthful vigor. The cult is all in on that image. While the sane world sees a lumbering, 78-year-old dotard wrestling with the English language – and losing.
The MAGAs will not give up on the lie. Democrats do not have to give up on the truth. But elections are won in the middle. And Harris painting Trump as a wack-job is the best tool to shift them to the left.
In “The Producers,” Mel Brooks showed the power of scorn. Fascism thrives on fear. Painting the autocrat as an ineffectual, feckless fool shows the uncommitted that the emperor has no clothes.
Democrats as a whole are embracing the ‘Trump is weird’ meme, while also hanging his poor VP pick around his neck.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee posted a message headlined: “House Republicans Privately Admit What We All Know: J.D. Vance Is Weird, Creepy, and Extreme.”
Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, a potential VP candidate, expanded “weird” to describe the Trump/Vance agenda. On MSNBC he said:
“You know there's something wrong with people when they talk about freedom: freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read. That stuff is weird,”
He expanded on the theme under the rubric, “These guys are weird” (See video below)
The guys who control big Democratic money are getting in on the act. Pat Dennis, president of the Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century offered this:
“I was sitting at a coffee shop in Milwaukee just outside the perimeter of the [the 2024 Republican National Convention last week], watching the MAGA base walk in and out, and meanwhile my research team kept sending me all these clips and highlights from the gigantic archive of footage and tape we’ve put together on J.D. Vance.
And while going through it all, it just crystalized it for me at that moment: So much of this race is going to boil down to ‘these guys are very weird and off-putting.’”
Trump and his fellow weirdos have yet to come up with an effective strategy to slow down the Democratic train. One weird strategy they have tried is to criticize Kamala for laughing.
How sad.
I guarantee you this. If that is the best they have, she will be the one who has the last laugh.