Damn, Donald Trump is weird, huh? It’s funny to say that now, after we’ve spent the last eight years taking him seriously, treating him like a legitimate politician and, in many cases, being pretty scared of what he might do next. Simply calling him “weird” feels like the understatement of the century — so why does it hurt him and his supporters so much?
If you haven’t heard, the major line of attack against Republicans right now is as clever as it is fundamental: it simply points out that Trump and the concept of “Trumpism” are, at their core, extremely “alien.”
What does that mean? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like: pointing out that he says weird things. That his most ardent defenders are a bunch of weirdos. That he looks weird, acts weird, and sounds weird. Prominent Democrats are selling that message in interviews, and Harris’ campaign even issued a press release calling Trump “pretty old and weird.”
The premise gets a lot of attention because it’s so undeniably true — “Trump Republicans” are so much weirder than your average, bread-and-butter conservatives. That may have been an advantage at one point — people rioted against Hillary Clinton precisely because she wanted to “shake up the system” by bringing in an outsider — but now the hunger for normal, boring politics seems to be back, and “weirdness” is no longer the virtue it once was.
You wouldn’t think a political movement built on insults, lies and obfuscation would be so surprised by such a straightforward diatribe, but it actually seems to be working. Republican presidential candidate turned Trump cheerleader Vivek Ramaswamy jumped to his defense last week, calling the argument “dumb and childish” — as if his boss hadn’t once ridiculed a disabled reporter by impersonating him during a campaign speech.
Senator Marco Rubio tried to turn it around, reportedly saying, “They called us weird, so I’ll call them weirder,” but that doesn’t really work when the leader of your opponent’s party is a seasoned lawyer, and the leader of your party for some reason can’t stop bringing up Hannibal Lecter at his rallies.
The tactic was pioneered by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who summed up his position in an interview with MSNBC: “They want to take away your books. They want to be in your exam room. That’s the bottom line. Don’t sugarcoat it. These are strange ideas. Listen to them.”
As a former schoolteacher, Walz is likely familiar with the devastating impact of being called “weird”—it’s about the worst thing a child can say to another. As a former queer child, I can attest to the fact that there’s nothing worse than being ostracized for your quirks—it’s essentially an attack on all the little quirks that make up your unique identity.
Of course, while many of us eventually grow out of that mindset and learn to embrace our strangeness, the entire Republican project is built on the assumption of normalcy. “We are the in-group — anything that doesn’t look, act, or worship like us is strange.” They say they want to bring back a nostalgic, white version of America where you can leave your door open and children are respected. Of course, that’s a tough position to take when your former president just nominated a running mate who can’t stop insulting single women as “childless cat ladies.”
Seriously, how do you defend yourself 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 the 5-foot-11 Michael Bloomberg “Mini Mike”), to the offensive (calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” after she claims she is of Native American descent), to—I’m not too old to admit it—the genuinely funny (“Ron DeSanctimonious” comes to mind). He’s a high school bully who doesn’t know what to do when his victims finally stand up to him.
Some have rightly pointed out that the word “weird” doesn’t fully capture the horrors Trump has inflicted on the world over the past decade. Surely better descriptions would be “racist”; “sexist”; even “evil”?
But the thing is, people have been calling him and his followers all of those things, and more, ever since he entered the political sphere. Those terms are all so emotionally charged, and so subjective, that they’ve become meaningless—“fascist” at this point is just a synonym for “person I don’t like,” even if it’s an accurate description. “Odd,” on the other hand, isn’t emotional at all—it’s just a dismissive statement of fact.
You simply can’t deny that these guys and their supporters are weird. Even if you largely agree with their views, you can’t deny that they approach them in a weird way. Selling conspiracy theories, never ceasing to talk about “the LGBT+ agenda”, spouting an endless stream of bizarre insults – only a complete weirdo would join such a group. You don’t want to be a weirdo, do you?
If you doubt the effectiveness of this strategy, consider that something similar happened in the UK. While Labour didn’t go on the attack and outright emphasise how strange the Tories had become by the end of their 14 years in power, that was certainly a major undercurrent in their campaign. Keir Starmer did a great job of portraying Labour as the “boring, back-to-basics party”, while Sunak was busy with people like Suella Braverman saying strange, off-putting things that just didn’t resonate with voters.
Republicans have clearly banked on their opponents’ old Michelle Obama attitude of “when they go low, we go high,” and it’s clear they have no strategy for when Democrats inevitably decide to go low as well. They have absolutely no defense against a charge of weirdness, and any attempt to refute it only results in more weirdness.
I’m glad Democrats found an effective way to fight back. It’s just weird that it took them so long to do it.