Harris and Democrats Land on a ‘Weird’ Message That Sticks Against Trump – Bloomberg
Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world
Americas+1 212 318 2000
EMEA+44 20 7330 7500
Asia Pacific+65 6212 1000
Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world
Americas+1 212 318 2000
EMEA+44 20 7330 7500
Asia Pacific+65 6212 1000
It’s usually Donald Trump who succeeds in labeling the opposition. The truth hurts.
He is weird.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
When a presidential candidate feels compelled to go on national TV to say that he and his running mate aren’t “weird” — and members of his party scurry to back him up — it suggests that his opponent’s campaign messaging is gaining traction.
“You know who’s plain weird? She is plain weird,” Donald Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in an interview aired last Tuesday, trying to deflect Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign barbs. He called into a popular conservative podcast a couple of days later to nail down his point. “I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not,” he told his hosts, adding that his running mate, Senator JD Vance, is “not at all” weird.
To no avail. By Friday, Harry Enten, a CNN analyst, had devoted a segment to discussing how much “weird” had entered the zeitgeist. “Sometimes there’s these attack lines in politics that really just don’t take hold,” he observed. “But to me it feels like a lot of folks are interested in this attack line.” He noted that Google searches for the word “weird” had soared, often in conjunction with four other terms: “Tim Walz” (the Minnesota governor and Democrat who was the first to label Trump “weird” during this news cycle), “MAGA,” “GOP” and “JD Vance.” Crucially, the rise of “weird” coincided with an acceleration of plunging approval ratings for Vance.
