The Surprising Efficacy of the “He’s Weird” Argument
The Surprising Efficacy of the “He’s Weird” Argument
There were many moments during Trump’s run in 2016 that seemed as though they might spell the end for his candidacy and career in politics. From calling Mexicans “criminals” and “rapists,” to the time he invited Russian interference in our election (a request Putin was more than happy to oblige), to the release of the Access Hollywood tape — the now-infamous “Grab em’ by the pussy” comment.
But perhaps there was no plainer display of his character than what we saw when he made fun of reporter, Serge Kovaleski, a columnist who suffers from a congenital joint condition. It wasn’t a misspeak, or an issue of policy, but among his most abject failures to display standard human decency. It was a moment where he seemed not just like a bad leader, or a selfish, lecherous creep, but the epitome of a high school bully — a man who would happily deign to humiliate a disabled person in front of a crowd.
But it’s largely that most repugnant component of his character that’s resulted in his rise to political power. It’s because he attacks people on Twitter and Truth Social, comes up with middle-school monikers to denigrate opponents and dissenters, and knows vitriol better than he does policy.
The most scathing political accusations have struggled to stick to the figure who turns around and hurls petty insults. He’s been aptly labeled “Teflon Don” for his ability to slip free from legal consequences for his crimes and remain unsaddled by all ills in the eyes of his supporters.
One of his most effective strategies has been his ability to bury his opponents by shoving their apocalyptic cries of a government on the brink of collapse into a sea of noise. Each new scandal that emerged throughout his 2016 run for office, as well as throughout his presidency, was quickly buried by a new one. Behind us are the days when pointing out the apparent threat of Trump’s rule was enough to sway voters. The dire cautionings about his character and intentions have tragically succumbed to a “boy who cried wolf” effect. It doesn’t matter how true the warnings are.
Most Democrats have grown utterly numb to the repeated pronouncements that Trump is a tyrant poised to take our democracy from us. When talking heads reiterate claims about insurrections and Trump’s insidious schemes to invalidate our votes, fingers enter the ears of even the most bleeding-heart liberals. They’re desensitized to the messages now.
The recycled warnings are as cliche for Democrats as they are unpersuasive to their opponents. But in this subtle shift of strategy emerging — redirecting much of the conversation away from Trump’s threats to our institutions, and centering it instead around his unremitting weirdness — it takes advantage of what we’ve known about Trump for years and weaponizes it against him: that he’s a bully. And a weird one.
The revision of their rhetoric has been attributed to Democratic Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. “Listen to [Trump]. He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter, and shocking sharks, and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind and I thought we just gave him way to much credit,” he explained in a CNN interview. “… That is weird behavior and I don’t think you call it anything else,” Walz later said of Trump’s seeming inability to laugh in the public eye, lest it be at someone’s expense.
To call a bully “a bully” will rarely bother them or make the victim tormenting stop. Labeling a bully “weird,” on the other hand, can bring their strongman status into question. It can challenge their very standing in the social hierarchy. People will suck up to someone powerful, but don’t want to be seen standing beside someone perceived as weak.
The Trump campaign’s response to the shift in the Harris team’s messaging has only confirmed that it’s precisely that strongman status they’re most afraid to lose — not his status as a leader who understands policy, or a magnanimous crusader who respects the institutions of the country he aims to govern.
They’re scared his base will stop seeing him as a normal, one-of-them American instead of the flag-hugging, shark-fearing, toilet-obsessed, detached weirdo billionaire that he is. They’re concerned that the conversation will center not around the talking points that make him sound like a capable threat, but the ones that make him appear a bizarre and feckless cretin.
Republican allies are barely even taking the time to espouse the notion that he’s a selfless defender of our country and democracy. They understand that their base believes that blindly. It’s the attacks against his normality that, like Trump himself, they seem to view as more of an affront than any of the repeated alarm bells about his self-serving, undemocratic beliefs.
The Kamala Harris campaign, moving more to the offensive position than we saw from the Biden campaign, seems correct to realize it’s these attacks that can damage his credibility most. Just as Trump’s entire campaign centered around attacks on a “Sleepy Joe Biden,” and was thrown into disarray as Biden withdrew from the race, he and his staffers are unprepared to fend off attacks about his strangeness.
Republicans can try to deflect attention away from Project 2025 and fears about a tyrannical second term in office, but there’s little they can do to shake the image that the ranting, raving, “Covfefe”-tweeting, orange makeup-slathered late-septuagenarian is anything other than cravenly unusual.
On one hand, there’s a way in which calling him weird trivializes the real perils that a second Trump term would pose. But on the other, there have been demands since as early as 2016 for the Democrats to play dirty and sink to using the language of their opponents. Harris has introduced an element of confrontationalism to her campaign that distinguishes it from the one that preceded it.
Yet, even in her most biting moments, she’s not mispronouncing her opponent’s name in a bald-faced attempt to invigorate racists. She’s not attacking the color of his skin, questioning his parentage, or demanding to see birth certificates — as Trump routinely asked of the Hawaii-born Barack Obama. She and her allies have elected instead to point out that many of the things that Trump does are, objectively, unusual.
While it may seem counterintuitive to focus on something as piddly as this aspiring tyrant’s weirdness, Trump’s near-decade in politics has proven that the strategies used against him have lost their cogency. The most alarmist arguments have all lost their punch. There’s hardly a new way under the sun to express what Democrats already know, and what Republicans have so routinely turned their backs on.
But there’s a surprising novelty in Democratic leaders honing in on the trivial rather than the broad — to taunt him over his fears to debate and not his despotic ambitions. The transition in strategy is rooted in a deeper understanding of the man who makes fun of cripples and takes pride in his power.