GOP melts down after Walz calls Trump and Vance weirdness ‘weird’

Stung by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s suggestion that the Grand Old Party is full of “weird people” these days, Republicans set out to prove they’re not weird in the weirdest possible ways.

Donald Trump Jr., son of the former president/convicted felon, fired back with a video clip of Vice President Kamala Harris having a nice chat with a drag queen.

The only one who came out looking less than fierce and fabulous in that post was Junior himself.

If you were one of the weird kids who got bullied on the playground, you might grow up to wear weird as a badge of honor. But weird hits differently if you were one of the bullies. Weird was their word for the weak. That might be why a party that shrugged off racism, sexism, school shootings, Nazi tiki torch parades, an attempted coup and a 78-year-old presidential candidate with 34 felony convictions absolutely melted down when Walz called them weird.

“This whole ‘they’re weird’ argument from the Democrats is dumb & juvenile,” sputtered onetime Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, continuing the party’s “I am rubber, you made eye contact with a drag queen” defense.

In the words of activist and school shooting survivor David Hogg — who has recently promoted Walz as a VP pick — “if you gotta say you aren’t weird- I got bad news for ya.”

By the weekend, you couldn’t turn on a Sunday talk show without finding a Democrat pointing to some weird thing happening over in the Trump campaign.

Walz, now on the vice presidential shortlist, was in the thick of it. When, he wondered, was the last time America heard Trump laugh? If Trump has ever laughed, Walz said, it was probably at someone, not with them.

“Listen to the guy,” he told CNN on Sunday. “He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind.”

Former President Donald Trump cannot stop singing the praises of fictional and criminally insane cannibal Hannibal Lecter. The man took a detour in the middle of his own nomination acceptance speech to eulogize the “late, great Hannibal Lecter” to an approving crowd at the Republican National Convention. When he’s not talking about cannibals or sharks or winning elections that he resoundingly lost, Trump’s weirdness takes an uglier turn.

For years, Trump has rhapsodized about iron-fisted dictators overseas. Last week, at the Turning Point Believers Summit in Florida, he suggested that the 2024 election might be the last one America ever needs if he wins. No more voting necessary.

“You won’t have to do it anymore,” Trump promised. “It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

National weirdness begets state-level weirdness. For years, one of the biggest draws at the Minnesota Republican Party’s State Fair booth has been a cut-out of Hillary Clinton in prison stripes. The party’s endorsed candidate for the U.S. Senate is extremely online reply guy Royce White, who spent campaign funds at strip clubs and begins and ends most online interactions with some variation of “shut up” followed by an expletive. The “only conservative” running for the Hennepin County Board allegedly threw a tarantula at a woman to settle an argument and posted selfies after her weekend in jail.

If that sounds weird, it’s because it is.