Democrats attacking Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance as “weird” is still getting under the former president’s skin, and had Trump arguing on Monday that he and Vance are “extremely normal people” during an event intended to tout his plan for the economy in York, Pennylvania.
“You can see it a little bit by this whack job,” Trump said, apparently referring to vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. “He said we’re weird, that J.D. and I are weird. I think we’re extremely normal people. Like you, exactly like … He’s weird.”
Walz, the Minnesota governor, began calling Republicans “weird” during a series of TV hits last month. “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 said on MSNBC.
The line of attack has resonated. At her first fundraiser since becoming the presumptive nominee, Kamala Harris said Trump is telling “wild lies about my record, and some of what he and his running mate are saying, it is just plain weird.” Harris went on to choose Walz as her own running mate, and the campaign now regularly casts their Republican opposition as “weird” — for everything from making awkward jokes about Diet Mountain Dew to trying to restrict Americans’ rights.
Trump and Vance have been on the defensive. “We’re normal guys who want to make this country great again,” Vance said earlier this month.
The line has also been bothering Trump. A source who regularly talks to Trump previously told Rolling Stone, “Of course he’s upset by it. The Democrats and the media are smearing this good man who came from nothing as some sort of weirdo.”
Trump brought it up during a press conference last week, as well. “She called me weird,” he said. “‘He’s weird.’ It was just a sound bite. And she called J.D. and I weird. He’s not weird.” About Harris and Walz, Trump added: “He’s a weird guy, and she’s weird in her policy.”
The “I know you are, but what am I” approach hasn’t seemed to work very well for Trump and Vance. “So far, at least, Trump-Vance has been incapable of finding an effective response,” David Karpf, a strategic communication professor at George Washington University, told the Associated Press last month.
On Sunday, the day before the Democratic National Convention began, the Democratic National Committee projected “Trump-Vance: ‘Weird as Hell’” on the side of Chicago’s Trump International Hotel and Tower.
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