“Weird” Trump Hates Being Laughed at Harris’s Strategy

AFP/APP

Washington: “Weird” Democrats want this to be the word of 2024 — their secret weapon to bring down Donald Trump. As a Kamala Harris campaign statement put it, “Trump is old and quite weird?” Harris herself echoed, “Just plain weird.”

Trump has built a political career on mocking everyone from opponents to his own staffers. However, being the butt of the joke makes him furious. “I hate when people laugh at me,” he told a rally earlier this month.

That “weird” jibe is Harris’s bid, in her come-from-behind campaign, to get the whole country laughing. While President Joe Biden used formal — often grandiose — speeches to frame Trump as an existential boogeyman, Harris’s team is attempting to diminish the Republican into something more akin to an unpleasant clown. Here are typical phrases from Harris campaign releases on Trump:”Bitter, unhinged.”

“Rambled about golf.”

“Generally sounded like someone you wouldn’t want to sit near at a restaurant — let alone be president of the United States.”

Regarding Trump’s vice presidential pick, JD Vance, the mockery is even more intense. Vance’s past comments belittling “childless cat ladies” — women who, like Harris, have not given birth — categorize him as “super weird,” according to two Democratic senators. A viral piece of online trolling — a fake story claiming that Vance wrote about sex acts with a sofa — highlights the extent to which the anti-Trump camp is ready to weaponize humor. Though the story was fabricated, an ongoing flow of memes involving Vance, couches, and implied activities between them did significant damage.

An article on the online news site Vox began with: “J.D. Vance didn’t have sex with a couch. But he’s still extremely weird.” Hillary Clinton also weighed in, stating: “If Republican leaders don’t enjoy being called weird, creepy, and controlling, they could try not being weird, creepy, and controlling.”

Trump Attacks Harris’s Laugh

The Trump campaign was blindsided by Biden’s abrupt decision to drop out and Harris’s rapid rise, which in one week has seen her ignite the Democratic base and pull level with Trump — or even ahead — in the polls. “A sucker punch,” Vance said in a recording of an address to supporters obtained by The Washington Post.

The shift in tone from Biden’s policy-heavy speeches about democracy to the edgier Harris approach is striking. Republicans are now looking to turn the joke back on their opponents. Trump is doing what he’s always done — dishing out insults and trying to find one that sticks. He’s called her “dumb,” “nuts,” and a “bum.”

Trump’s combative son, Don Jr, is leading a drive to flip the “weird” jibe on its head. He posted on X, “What a … weirdo,” using a common vulgarity, over a video clip of Harris supporting access to gender reassignment surgery for prison inmates. He wrote in another post about her transgender support, “Talk about weird priorities.”

If Harris thinks she can laugh at Trump, he has an answer to that too — by attacking the way she laughs. “You can tell a lot by a laugh,” he said, trying out “laughing Kamala” as a nickname. “She’s crazy.”