Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance has responded to accusations that he is “weird.” He said he is a happily married father of three children, and if people find that weird, that is their prerogative. He added, “They can call me what they want to.”
The Kamala Harris campaign recently began referring to Trump and his running mate as “weird,” and the trend quickly caught on. The word is used with growing frequency at several rallies and on pro-Democrat websites and blogs. The label is largely targeted at JD Vance and related to his call for parents to have more voting rights than people without children. His remarks that the Democratic Party is led by “childless cat ladies” have also come under fire.
It is unclear where the “weird” accusation originated, but some analysts have described it as a stroke of genius. David Karpf, a strategic communication professor at George Washington University, said it puts the Trump campaign on a defensive footing. “It frustrates opponents, leading them to further amplify it through off-balance responses,” he said. Karpf added that Trump has so far been unable to come up with a robust response.
Some commentators have suggested that Harris first referred to Trump as weird when she was preparing to stand for the Presidency in 2018. She reportedly examined Hillary Clinton’s history against Trump and noted his posture during their debates, during which the Republican hovered behind Clinton as she spoke. The Vice President told her aides that if she were Clinton, she would have turned to Trump and asked, “Why are you being so weird?”
Republicans have attempted to turn the tables on the Harris campaign and begun describing Democrats as weird – a move analysts say demonstrates the defensiveness Democrats had hoped for. Donald Trump Jr., for instance, said it was weird that Kamala Harris allowed criminals on to the streets when she was a California prosecutor. JD Vance tweeted that it was “weird” if people did not want to have children because of climate change.
Some commentators have speculated that the “weird” label has worked so well for Democrats because the public wants to get back to normal. Writing for the British publication The Independent, one journalist said that people enjoyed the outspokenness and edginess that Trump brought to the political stage, but that may now have worn off, and people want to return to “normal, boring politics.” Ryan Coogan argued that “weird” is a particularly cutting insult because it is dismissive and unemotional, and causes others to laugh at the person being labeled.
Among the things being described as weird is Donald Trump’s repeated references to the fictional Silence of the Lambs character Hannibal Lecter. Trump has mentioned him at several rallies, leaving some people confused. The former President said he mentions Lecter because that is the kind of person coming through the southern border as other countries have empty their “insane asylums” and send the inmates to America.
Hannibal Lecter was a serial killer and cannibal played by Anthony Hopkins in the hit ‘90s movie.
