Why calling Trump ‘weird’ is freaking Republicans out

Ryan Coogan, The Independent

Hell, Donald Trump is weird, isn’t he? It’s funny to say it now, after we’ve spent the past eight years taking him seriously, treating him like a legitimate politician, and in many cases being quite afraid of what he might do next. Simply calling him “weird” feels like the understatement of the century — so why is it getting to him and his supporters so much?

If you haven’t heard, the big attack line against Republicans at the moment is as clever as it is basic — simply pointing out the fact that Trump, and “Trumpism” as a concept, are at their core extremely “weird”.

What does that mean? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like: pointing out that he says weird stuff. That his most ardent defenders are a bunch of weirdos. That he looks, acts, and sounds weird. Prominent Democrats are selling the line in interviews, and the Harris campaign even put out a press release calling Trump “quite old and weird”.

The angle is getting a lot of traction because it’s so undeniably true — “Trump Republicans” are so much weirder than your regular, bread-and-butter conservatives. That might have been an asset at some point — people rebelled against Hillary Clinton precisely because they wanted to “shake up the system” by appointing an outsider — but now the appetite for normal, boring politics seems to have returned, and “weirdness” is no longer the virtue it once was.

You wouldn’t think that a political movement built on insults, lies and obfuscation would be so taken aback by such a straightforward bit of name-calling, but it really seems to be working. Republican-presidential-hopeful-turned-Trump-cheerleader Vivek Ramaswamy went on the defence last week, calling the argument “dumb & juvenile” — as if his boss didn’t once mock a differently abled reporter by doing an impression of him during a campaign speech.

Senator Marco Rubio tried turning 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 opponent’s party is an accomplished attorney, and the leader of your party won’t stop bringing up Hannibal Lecter at his rallies for some reason.

The tactic was pioneered by Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who summed up his position in an interview with MSNBC: “They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room. That’s what it comes down to. Don’t sugarcoat this. These are weird ideas. Listen to them speak.”

As a former schoolteacher, Walz is presumably familiar with the devastating impact of being called “weird” — it’s just about the worst thing that one kid can say to another. As a former weird kid, I can attest that there’s nothing worse than being ostracised for your quirks — it is, at its core, an attack on all the little idiosyncrasies 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 in-group — anything that doesn’t look, act or worship like us is weird.” They say they want to bring back a nostalgia-tinted, white picket fence version of America where you can leave your door unlocked and kids are respectful. Of course, that’s a difficult position to take when your last president just nominated a running mate who can’t stop insulting single women as “childless cat ladies”.

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 the 5ft 7in Michael Bloomberg “Mini Mike”), to the offensive (calling Elizabath Warren “Pocahontas” after she claimed to have Native American ancestry), to the — I’m not too big to admit it — genuinely quite 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 people have rightly pointed out that the word “weird” doesn’t fully encapsulate the horrors that Trump has foisted upon the world over the past decade. Surely better descriptors might be “racist”; “sexist”; even “evil”?

But the thing is, people have been calling him and his supporters all of those things, and more, since he entered the political sphere. Those terms are all so charged with emotion, and so subjective, that they’ve become meaningless — “fascist” is just a synonym for “person I don’t like” at this point, even when it’s an accurate descriptor. “Weird”, by contrast, isn’t emotive at all — it’s just a dismissive statement of fact.

You simply cannot dispute the fact that these guys and their supporters are weird. Even if you broadly agree with their positions, you can’t deny that they approach them in a weird way. Pedalling conspiracy theories, never shutting up about “the agenda”, spewing out a neverending stream of bizarre insults — only a complete weirdo would fall in with a crowd like that. You don’t want to be a weirdo, do you?

If you have any doubts as to the efficacy of this strategy, consider that something similar happened right here in the UK. While Labour didn’t go on the attack, outright highlighting just how weird the Tories had become by the end of their 14 years in power, that was certainly a huge undercurrent of their campaign. Keir Starmer did a great job of positioning Labour as the “boring, back to basics party”, while Sunak was busy dealing with people like Suella Braverman saying strange, offputting things that just didn’t resonate with voters.

Republicans have clearly banked on the old Michelle Obama “when they go low, we go high” attitude from their opponents, and it’s clear they don’t have a strategy for when Democrats inevitably decide to go low as well. They have absolutely no defence against a charge of weirdness, and any attempt to rebuke it just results in even more weirdness.

I’m glad Democrats have found an effective way to fight back. It’s just weird that it took them this long to do it.