In his July 29 podcast, Tim Graham was dismissive of Kamala Harris calling Republicans “weird,” largely because he had to handwave a more concerning statement by Donald Trump:
On Monday morning, NBC’s Hallie Jackson aired a story on the presidential race with these themes. Kamala’s campaign is loaded with dough; Kamala thinks the Republicans are all “weird”; and Trump is “on defense” because he made a lame joke about Americans not needing to vote in four years.
This was silly, because the Democrats seek to undo whatever Trump would try to do. This also came with commentary from Kamala’s camp. They did the usual left-wing freakout: this means the End of Democracy! Then NBC dug into its video archive from 2023 to remind everyone that Liz Cheney claims Trump may never leave office if he gets elected again.
Graham offered no evidence that Trump’s statement was meant to be a “joke,” lame or otherwise.
The next day, Graham complained that an ad from a left-leaning super PAC “ad”explicitly mocks conservative Catholics and Christians who are pro-life” and “claim the uptight religious Republicans want to ban everything, because they’re weird.”
As the “weird” label started catching on — because people started realizing that right-wing bullies are actually hiding their cowardice and can’t handle being called out for who they actually are — the MRC started ramping up its attacks on the word. Mark Finkelstein whined in a July 30 post (bolding in original):
Somebody might want to run an AI analysis of Eugene Robinson’s current Washington Post column: “No, really, Republicans are getting weirder.”
It’d be interesting to see if it were written in the style of Kamala Harris speechwriters or some other member of her campaign. In both his column and his appearance on today’s Morning Joe, Robinson repeatedly used the official Harris campaign attack word on the Trump-Vance ticket: “weird.”
Eight times in his column, and another six times in one shortish Morning Joe segment, Robinson deployed the w-word against the Republican ticket. Could a columnist possibly be a more faithful repeater of a favored candidate’s propaganda? Why bother reading Robinson? Why not just go directly to the source: the Harris campaign website, or perhaps to YouTubes of her deep thoughts?
Indeed, in his column, Robinson quoted a Harris campaign email, and a statement by a possible Harris VP pick, calling Trump and Vance “weird.” He hit the liberal objection to Vance wanting parents to have more political power.
[…]Note: Substitute host Jonathan Lemire is also aboard the “weird” train. Responding to Robinson, the seventh word out of Lemire’s mouth was . . . you guessed it.
Nicholas Fondacaro lamely tried to turn it around during his daily hate-watch of “The View”:
The Cackling Coven of ABC’s The View largely embraced the new campaign message of Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats of calling any and everything about Republicans “weird.” They praised how “effective” it supposedly was. But, as co-host Joy Behar warned, it opened them up to people putting them under the magnifying glass; which is what NewsBusters will do here, highlighting a lot of their truly weird comments and takes.
“I think the problem is that the GOP needs to convince voters that Trump and Vance are regular guys and they’re not. They are weird just like they’ve been called,” proclaimed staunchly racist and anti-Semitic co-host Sunny Hostin (the descendant of slave owners). She would go on to argue in favor of using the word “weird” because it was “innocuous” and “benign.”
Moderator Whoopi Goldberg boasted: “Well, Democrats seem to have landed on this word that they think sums up the Republican ticket.”
“Now, getting to the weird thing that they’ve really turned on the right, the Harris campaign is really kind of taken that weird. Think about it. People on the right say a lot of weird things,” declared pretend independent Sara Haines. “So, that is why that is so effective, is there is so much weird on the other side. But that pretty much sums it up.”
Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin falsely claimed she didn’t like “name-calling” but liked throwing around the word “weird” because, “I don’t see as below the belt.”
Behar seemingly knew this blog was coming because she warned the rest of the cast: “I don’t think you should use the word ‘weird.’… [It] opens the door for the other side to say, ‘Well, you think we’re weird? Look at you.’”
What’s actually weird was Farah Griffin once announcing on the show that she wouldn’t have an issue with her husband having a drunken one-night stand as long as he didn’t fall in love: “I could forgive, like, a drunken hookup mistake. I could not forgive falling in love with someone else.” She later doubled down on it, and then explained how to introduce another lover into a relationship.
One might call it weird that Fondacaro continues to falsely slander Hostin as “racist” and “anti-Semitic” even though it adds to the pile of evidence Hostin’s lawyers are surely compiling for their eventual defamation lawsuit against him and his employer.
In the same post in which he groused that Vance’s “childless cat ladies” slur was called out, Graham similary groused that the “weird” tag was catching on, disapprovingly quoting a political analyst stating that Vance’ weirdness “allows Democrats to settle on this new messaging, where it’s not just offensive, it’s also really weird. We keep hearing like the Democrats like Tim Walz and Brian Schatz and even Vice President Kamala Harris have said on the stump that the things that Trump and Vance and other Republicans have said are just weird. Dissect that as a strategy.”
Finkelstein huffed in a July 31 post that the opening segment of that day’s “Morning Joe” “was all about ‘cat ladies,’ ‘weird,’ extolling the Kamala Harris rally in Atlanta, and reveling in a new swing-state poll showing things going the Democrats’ way,” further whining that commentator Katty Kay was “calling Vance’s facetious suggestion that people with children get an additional vote ‘weird.’ Nicely played, Katty! Keep ‘weird’ alive!”
Jorge Bonilla used an Aug. 4 post to manufacture a grand “Regime Media” conspiracy about the “weird” labeling and accurately quoting Vance’s “childless cat ladies” statement:
One of the main purposes of the Regime Media, formerly known as “mainstream”, is to further partisan Democrat narratives and do everything possible so as to push them out to the general public. The most recent example of this partisan message echoing disguised as news is the ceaseless promotion of negative narratives intended to adversely shape the electorate’s opinion of Senator JD Vance (R-OH), the 2024 GOP vice presidential candidate.
Watch as CBS White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang admits as much on Face the Nation:
[…]Her confession is twofold: not only did she admit that the Regime Media chose the “cat lady” and “weird” talking points as a focal point of coverage, but that they do so because it detracts from any Trump messaging. “So it’s taking away from Trump and that is an impact in and of itself”.
Election interference, when performed by the Regime Media, can take multiple forms. Sometimes a story is suppressed, as in the case of Hunter Biden’s laptop. And sometimes, that election interference comes in the incessant pushing of narrative- as in the cases of “cat ladies” and “weird”, respectively. Different means, but the intended outcome is the same- to tilt the balance of public opinion in support of the Democratic ticket.
Yes, Bonilla this reporting accurately about Republicans is “election interference.”
Clay Waters grumbled in a Aug. 5 post that the “weird” label was accurately treated as news:
When Laura Barron-Lopez appears on PBS, the question is: Reporter or Taxpayer-Funded White House Press Secretary?
On Friday’s PBS News Hour, it sounded like Karine Barron-Lopez, touting how Democrats have a new line of personal attack: Branding Republicans as “weird” and “creepy.” The PBS White House correspondent dropped her previous sensitivity to personal attacks and seemed to approve of the new tactic.
Anchor Geoff Bennett set things up. “While on the campaign trail, the vice president is trying some new language on for size, like calling her opponent Donald Trump weird.”
Waters then added a weird twist, claiming that Barron-Lopez “didn’t mind that the vice president and her team sounded like bullies lording it over ‘weirdos’ in a 1980s high school comedy.” Huh?