If You Thought The Trump-Vance Campaign Was Weird Before... Watch As More Weirdos Gravitate To It

The RFK, Jr/Tulsi Gabbard Freak Show

On Tucker Carlson’s podcast RFK, Jr. said he’s been asked to join the Trump transition team, headed up by wrestler Linda McMahon, right-wing billionaire Howard Lutnick, Trumpanzee Jr and Eric Trumpanzee. Kennedy might be lying but it seems like the kind of thing Trump would do. And the Democrats couldn’t be more delighted: A Weirdo Campaign Just Got Weirder. Nick Nehamas reported that the Democrats don’t have to dig too far to make the case that Keenly is as weird as Trump and Vance. “Kennedy has recently made headlines for decapitating a dead whale with a chain saw and strapping its head to the family minivan, as well as dumping a deceased bear cub in Central Park. Now the Democrats want to attach his baggage to Trump… Democrats and their allies also plan to try to make Trump own some of Kennedy’s fringe positions and conspiratorial views, including his false statements about the dangers of vaccines and his brief call for a national abortion ban. ‘A weirdo campaign just got weirder,’ said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a Democratic think tank that has led efforts to stop independent and third-party candidates from siphoning votes from Democrats. ‘This campaign of freaks is not going to do Republicans any favors.’ And on Monday, after Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who has rebranded herself as a celebrity in the MAGA movement, endorsed Trump, the DNC issued a news release with the headline: ‘Trump’s Circle of Weirdos Gets Even More Extreme.’”

Democrats believe that Kennedy’s exit from the race plays into their longstanding argument that he is essentially a right-wing stooge and that it bolsters their case that voters should see the election as a binary choice between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

And they say Kennedy voters are too small in number and disconnected from politics to have anything more than a marginal impact in November.

…[M]any of Kennedy’s supporters were low-information voters  with little track record of showing up on Election Day, meaning their support for any candidate was not guaranteed.

Rahna Epting, the executive director of the liberal activist group MoveOn— which invested heavily in attacking Kennedy— said he had gone from being a “dangerous” spoiler to a nonentity.

‘He’s irrelevant,’ Epting said, calling his campaign ‘opportunistic’ and saying it was ‘solely driven to damage the Democrats’ chances of winning the White House,’ as evidenced by his endorsement of Trump.

On Sunday, it also became clear how Republicans could be forced to defend Kennedy’s controversial views.

In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Vance was asked about Kennedy’s statements about vaccines, antidepressants and the Sept. 11 attacks. The Ohio senator hedged and turned to attacking Harris before the host, Kristen Welker of NBC News, asked him if he agreed with Kennedy’s statement that he would not ‘take sides’ on what happened on Sept. 11.

‘Well, of course I don’t agree with that, Kristen,’ Vance replied. ‘Now, to be clear, I don’t know what RFK actually said there. Maybe there was additional context.’”

Top communications professional Dan Pfeiffer seems delighted: the Democratic Party in the Kamala Harris era… figured out an effective way to talk about Donald Trump and get across his “chaos, corruption, and general awfulness… Democrats learned the lessons of the Trump era and are using them with ruthless efficiency.” Until now, Democrats made “three errors that we couldn’t stop making:

Taking the Bait: Trump is a classic troll— in all senses of the word. He is constantly seeking a reaction from the press, the public, and especially his political opponents. Trolling is where Trump excels. He floods the zone with a never-ending torrent of outrage bait that proves irresistible to Democrats. I get it... it seems like a moral abdication to let some of Trump’s racism and misogyny go unremarked upon. But the end result is we spend the campaign chasing him around on his chosen playing field and unable to drive a consistent narrative of our own.

Making Trump Look Strong: Trump believes— correctly— that strength is the axis upon which American politics operates. He subscribes to Bill Clinton’s famous observation, "When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right.” Trump’s dictator schtick is all about giving people who don’t love his personality or behavior permission to support him. They want to feel safe. Much of our response to Trump’s authoritarianism inadvertently amplified Trump’s chosen strongman narrative.

Failing to Pick (and Stick To) a Narrative: When it comes to messaging, Donald Trump is a target-rich opportunity. He is a criminal, a coward, incompetent, a racist, a fraudster, a rapist, a plutocrat, a liar, a wannabe dictator— I could go on and on. Each is true and should be politically devastating. However, over nearly a decade now, Democrats could not settle on a single narrative. Repetition is the key to messaging success and our messages were too varied to make a lasting impression.

So, what was different this time around?

1. Minimizing Trump’s Impact

For the last decade, American politics revolved around Donald Trump. The thrust of Democratic messaging has been about Trump and the threat he poses to the country. To the extent Democrats had a positive message, it's that we weren’t Trump.

Kamala Harris’s campaign has made politics about something other than Donald Trump. Sure, most of the convention speakers mentioned Trump. There were slickly produced videos about January 6th and a coterie of folks holding a giant copy of Project 2025. That’s to be expected; but the convention spotlighted Harris and Tim Walz rather than Trump. That’s a welcome change, and based on the ratings, something for which the public has been yearning.

2. Responding On Our Terms

The first sign that Kamala Harris had Trump’s number came when Trump questioned her racial identity during an unhinged interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference.

Another candidate would have responded with outrage, which would have been completely understandable. You can imagine a solemn speech about Trump’s racism or a podium-pounding tirade. Instead, Kamala Harris brushed it off as “more of the same old stuff.” Watch this video of Harris’s response and note the big smile at the front end.

No one is arguing that you should turn the other cheek or ignore his transgressions, but we should respond without fueling the outrage cycles that are Trump’s political lifeblood.

3. Making Trump Weak and Small

The way to beat a wannabe strongman is to expose their weakness, not raise concerns about how they will use their power. The idea that Trump is small and weak was a consistent theme through all of the major speeches. In his convention speech, former President Obama captured this notion when he said:

One thing is for certain: Donald Trump is not losing sleep over these questions. Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes. It just goes on and on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.

At one point, Obama took the admonition to make Trump seem small to an unexpected and perhaps overly literal level.

Vice President Harris did something similar in her speech by referring to Trump as an “unserious man.”

This new, smarter approach to Trump contributes to the former President’s unraveling before our eyes.

4. Trump Only Cares About Himself

Months ago, the Biden campaign settled on a message about Trump— he only cares about himself and rich and powerful people like him. This is a good message because it is so obviously true. Because his campaign was overwhelmed with concerns about his age, Biden could not drive this message. Over the four nights of the convention, speaker after speaker hammered home this point. I thought former President Bill Clinton said it in a particularly compelling way:

So the next time you hear him, don’t count the lies. Count the I’s. Count the I’s. His vendettas, his vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies. He’s like one of those tenors opening up before he walks out on stage like I did, trying to get his lungs open by singing, “Me, me, me, me, me, me.”

In her speech, Harris took the “Trump is a narcissist” message to another level by connecting his selfishness to a policy impact on people’s lives:

Now compare that to Donald Trump. Because I think everyone here knows, he doesn’t actually fight for the middle class. Not— he doesn’t actually fight for the middle class. Instead, he fights for himself and his billionaire friends. And he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to $5 trillion to the national debt.

In many respects, this convention was a rip-roaring success, but the anti-Trump messaging, in particular, bodes well for the next 69 days.