In recent weeks, Democrats have increasingly been calling Republicans “weird,” and the label might be starting to grate on them.
Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy complained about the name-calling on Sunday.
“This whole ‘they’re weird’ argument from the Democrats is dumb & juvenile,” Ramaswamy, who owns a portion of BuzzFeed, HuffPost’s parent company, wrote on social media.
“This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest,” he wrote. “It’s also a tad ironic coming from the party that preaches ‘diversity & inclusion.’ Win on policy if you can, but cut the crap please.”
Democrats in Congress have occasionally called Republicans “weird” in the past few weeks, but surrogates for Vice President Kamala Harris, now the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, have amplified the message as the election enters a 100-day countdown.
The Harris campaign described former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, as “old and quite weird” in a press release last week. In a separate release, it described his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), as “weird” and “a creep.”
“Assigning extra votes to certain people based on the size of their family is weird,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote Sunday on X, formerly Twitter, describing a policy idea Vance once suggested. “Banning library books is weird. Government being in people’s bedroom is weird. Government being in the exam room is weird.”
“Saying ‘weird’ is not a schoolyard taunt ― it’s an observation,” the senator added.
“Weird” is a far more lighthearted attack than other rhetoric that President Joe Biden, before he ended his reelection campaign, used to describe Trump, whom he called a wannabe “dictator” and a “threat to democracy.” Some Republicans blamed the rhetoric for the assassination attempt against Trump earlier this month, though no evidence has emerged that the shooter was paying attention to…
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