Trump team triples down on ‘weird’
Donald Trump, JD Vance and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. walk into the Republican Party and take over.
That’s it. That’s the joke. A presidential ticket that has futilely tried to shake the “weird” label became roughly 17 billion times more bananas late last week when Trump accepted Kennedy’s endorsement, shaking his hand onstage at an Arizona rally and hitching the GOP wagon to an insane conspiracy theorist, dangerous antivaxxer and noted dead-bear-cub-carcass hauler.
The “these guys are weird” memes, birthed by Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s description of Trump and Vance, are no match for the Republican Party’s new trifecta of wackadoodles.
What word captures a Trump/ Vance/RFK Jr. triad? Cranks? Nutballs? Crackpots? Wingnuts?
While we try to imagine the heartburn this threesome is causing reasonable people standing in the remains of the Trump-bulldozed Republican Party, let’s break down the odd combo.
At the top, of course, is Trump, whose bonkers-bona fides are well established. He still thinks that he won the election he lost and that his crowd sizes are always bigger than anyone else in history, and he continues to speak regularly of the fictional “late, great Hannibal Lecter” … I could go on, but there’s not enough space. He’s at least 19 McNuggets short of a 20-piece.
Kennedy isn’t just a dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracist ...
We’ll skip over Vance – as that’s clearly what Trump would like to do – and go straight to RFK Jr., the Kennedy even the Kennedy family disavows.
He ended his ludicrous presidential campaign and endorsed Trump on Friday, a decision that makes perfect sense if you’re a naked opportunist with horrible judgment.
Kennedy has, for years, been a vocal critic of vaccines, which is unerringly stupid and dangerous. He has ranted about journalists being recruited by the CIA to brainwash Americans, part of a CIA program he claims is called “Operation Mockingbird.”
He also blamed COVID-19 on the government during a 2022 podcast, and Mother Jones summarized his theory like this: “A global elite led by the CIA had been planning for years to use a pandemic to end democracy and impose totalitarian control on the entire world.”
If this particular Kennedy walked into a pub and started talking, the drunk guy at the end of the bar would say, “Whoa, dude, you want me to call you a cab or something? You’re not makin’ sense.”
When Trump introduced Kennedy as his new endorsee during a Friday rally in Glendale, Arizona, he said the conspiracist has “raised critical issues that have been too long ignored in this country.”
Hoo boy!
The ‘these guys are weird’ memes ... are no match for the Republican Party’s new trifecta of wackadoodles.
We’re gonna need a silo-size container to store all this extra crazy.
Trump’s embrace of RFK Jr. glues the GOP to Kennedy’s years of babbling nonsense. The Trump campaign can hem and haw and say the two sides don’t agree on everything, but good luck threading that needle.
The Associated Press reported late last week: “Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan … entertained the idea that Kennedy could join Trump’s administration as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.”
Hope you like measles and polio, America, because that’s what the Trump/(Vance)/Kennedy Republican ticket has cookin’!
Vance struggles with doughnuts ... and people ... and everything
Speaking of Vance, though most would rather not, he’s doing little to counter the oddness of the “Trump yelling about stuff that isn’t true while embracing a conspiracy theorist who has a brain worm” vibe.
Vance went viral last week for trying and failing to seem normal at a Georgia doughnut shop. He appeared to not understand how doughnuts work or how to engage with human beings, stiffly asking questions before showing zero interest in the workers’ answers.
It was the cringe felt ’round the world.
Vance followed that up with a Sunday interview on “Meet the Press” where he was told some people were offended and hurt by his now-infamous “childless cat ladies” comment.
He was asked if he regrets the comment, and rather than taking that easy lob for a political slam dunk, he babbled and tried to the change the subject then said: “I have a lot of regrets ... but making a joke three years ago is not at the top (of) the list.”
Way to nail it, weirdo! He also said, “I think that it’s much more important for me to just be a normal human being,” which is both hilarious and something he’s not accomplishing. At all.
So here we are at the tail end of summer 2024, a couple of months before the presidential election and this triumvirate of tedious turkeys somehow constitutes the face of the Republican Party: A lying former one-term president, a senator who can’t handle the complexities of ordering doughnuts and the Kennedy the rest of the Kennedy family won’t invite to Thanksgiving dinner.
Nice job, GOP.
Now, America needs to find a better word for “weird.”