Trump and Vance are getting more and more...well, weird
“Weird.” It’s the new Democratic talking point being used to describe former President Donald Trump and his newly minted running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
It was first used by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in the wake of newly-surfaced Vance videos in which he calls Democrats “childless cat ladies” who have no stake in the future of America — for some inexplicable reason.
Until now, Walz was a low-profile pol who didn’t have much national name ID. But thanks to “weird,” he’s gone viral — even joining the list of potential veep picks for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Add to “childless cat ladies” Vance’s insistence that Dems will call his diet Mountain Dew racist, and Trump’s kooky obsession with Hannibal Lecter, and it’s no wonder the “weird” label has stuck. This comes as Trump suddenly seems particularly undone by Harris’ replacement of President Joe Biden, and his running mate is turning off the very voters he was meant to woo.
Indeed Vance, meant to bring in Rust Belt voters in the Midwest, is polling worse in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin than he does in an average of all polls, with just a 28% favorable rating. “So the people who know him best, the region that knows him best, they like him even less than America likes him,” as CNN data guru Harry Enten put it.
And things are getting worse for the GOP ticket. Exiting the Republican National Convention, Vance had a net favorable rating of negative six points — already historically bad. Now, a new ABC News/IPSOS poll has him at negative 15 points.
Weird attacks on Harris, women
In addition to Vance’s remarks about childless women — otherwise known as voters — being very, very weird, the ways in which Trump and his surrogates are failing miserably at attacking Harris are very, very weird, too.
Trump’s daughter-in-law compared Harris to a trash bag. Several Republican lawmakers and commentators thought it was a good idea to refer to the former prosecutor, attorney general, senator and current VP as a “DEI hire,” who was otherwise unqualified.
Trump has mocked her laugh, calling it the “laugh of a crazy person.” He’s called her “Lyin’ Kamala,” a “ play toy,” “ crazy,” “nuts” and “dumb as a rock.”
He’s now trying out bigoted religious attacks, calling her “the most Anti-Catholic person ever to run for high office in the US,” and called her husband Doug Emhoff, “a crappy Jew, he’s a horrible Jew.”
Jackson Lahmeyer, a former Republican Senate candidate in Oklahoma, posted on X that “Both Joe + the Ho gotta go.” He’s the head of Pastors for Trump. (You read that right.)
Folks, this is as good as they’ve come up with to deal with Harris, apparently.
As I said, women, and in particular suburban women in swing states, will be crucial to winning the election. And in a cycle in which Republicans are stripping states of abortion protections, and attempting to block women’s access abortion pills and to IVF— a process that helps previously “childless” women conceive — the weird attacks on women seem very, very risky.
Men taking notice
But they can’t help themselves. And it’s not just women who are noticing, but men, too. Men on Fox News, of all places.
Fox’s Neil Cavuto tussled with Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, who insisted on repeatedly calling Harris a “ding dong,” and “a member of the loony wing of the Democratic Party.”
“She’s just like Congresswoman [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez. Except without the bartending experience,” Kennedy said, in another cheap shot.
Cavuto questioned the wisdom of such attacks, saying, “It’s going to come back to bite your hide, isn’t it?”
Fox’s Stuart Varney likewise raised the alarm bells when he shared, “I’ve been out and about over the weekend. And when Donald Trump called Kamala Harris ‘dumb,’ that was a profound mistake, in my opinion. Women react to that kind of thing, and so they should!”
Fox’s Trey Gowdy told a moving story about the many childless women he knows. “Some of the finest people I know don’t have children, teachers and guidance counselors and lawyers and doctors. And they love other people’s children enough to teach and guide and protect and minister to them.” This was seconds before he interviewed Vance.
And Fox’s Brian Kilmeade said of Vance’s contortions to explain his remarks, “When you’re explaining, you’re probably losing.”
“Losing” is perhaps an even better word than “weird” to describe the Trump campaign now. Harris is surging, closing the gap with Trump in battleground states, and the enthusiasm around her is measurable.
Will they figure out that she has a record they can actually go after before they piss off all the women they’ll need to win? Or in their desperation, will they just get weirder and weirder?
Hide your cats and lock up the diet Mountain Dew.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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