It was Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz who started describing Republicans as weird and, wow, has it caught on. With one word, Walz summed up the GOP's myriad foibles. It's a succinct and apt descriptor. No wonder he's reportedly on the short list for vice president for presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
It began with Walz's recent appearance on MSNBC. "That stuff is weird, they come across weird," Walz said, as CBS News reported. He followed up on CNN Sunday, saying, "I see Donald Trump talking about the wonderful Hannibal Lecter or whatever weird thing he is on tonight ... That is weird behavior. I don't think you call it anything else."
Trump has mentioned Lecter, the fictional psycho killer made famous in "The Silence of the Lambs" film (and novel by Thomas Harris), so often that he must believe the guy is real. As the Guardian noted, during a rambling tangent about immigrants last week, Trump said, "They're coming from everywhere. They're coming from all over the world, from prisons and jails, and mental institutions and insane asylums. You know, they go crazy when I say, 'The late great Hannibal Lecter,' OK? They say, 'Why would he mention Hannibal Lecter? He must be cognitively in trouble.' No no no, these are real stories. Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lamb [sic]. He's a lovely man. He'd love to have you for dinner."
Suddenly, Democrats have a word of the moment in this momentous election and it's sticking. Republicans don't know how to handle it. Harris herself used it during a campaign stop in Massachusetts last weekend. "You may have noticed Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record, and some of what he and his running mate are saying is just plain weird," she said. She said it again at a rally in Atlanta Tuesday that saw 10,000 people fill an arena.
And when it comes to Republican running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance, well, he is just weird.
In a 2021 clip with then-Fox host Tucker Carlson that has gone viral, Vance questioned Democrats — including Harris, gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) — for not having biological children.
"We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too," Vance said.
The backlash was swift, a new "childless cat lady" meme was born, and celebrities such as actor Jennifer Aniston, who's been public about her own struggles with infertility, spoke out. Harris, of course, is stepmom to two children with her husband, Doug Emhoff. And even Emhoff's ex-wife was quick to defend Harris, saying the three of them have co-parented the kids for the last 10 years. For Buttigieg, the smear was personal, and sad. As he said on CNN last week, at the time of Vance's comments, he and his husband, Chasten, had just "been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey."
"He couldn't have known that, but maybe that's why you shouldn't be talking about other people's children," added Buttigieg, who's also reportedly being considered to be Harris' running mate. Buttigieg and his husband are now the parents of 3-year-old twins.
And Vance? After all the blowback, he doubled down, telling Megyn Kelly on her podcast that he was being sarcastic and was criticizing the Democratic Party for being "anti-family" and "anti-child." "I have nothing against cats," he said.
The thing is, it's Republican policies that have harmed families. It's Republicans who want to ban IVF, which has been used to create families for decades. Republican senators, including Vance, by the way, blocked a Democratic bill that would have federally guaranteed the right to IVF services. Democrats have for years tried to expand the child tax credit to lift poor children out of poverty, as Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell wrote.
Then, of course, there's abortion. Trump nominated the three conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who provided the votes to overturn Roe v. Wade two years ago. Ever since, however, the GOP has faced a backlash as people in states where abortion is on the ballot have voted to make it legal or, on the flip side, voted against curtailing access. In Harris, should she become the Democratic presidential nominee as expected, abortion rights advocates have a strong voice to rally the country. Polls, after all, show a majority of U.S. voters back reproductive services, including access to abortion.
Project 2025 in the deep freeze? Think again
In a related matter, the conservative Heritage Foundation and hundreds of other far-right groups threw in the towel — sort of — Tuesday and said that they're ending policy work on Project 2025, the authoritarian playbook for a second Trump administration that would be particularly harmful to LGBTQ people. Its policy director, former Trump administration personnel official Paul Dans, is departing.
But don't buy it for a minute. The criticism had gotten so bad that Heritage has been forced to backtrack — publicly, at least. Don't forget that this document, all 900 pages of it, is already written. The policy work is largely done. If Trump wins, they'll just dust it off and implement it anyway. Trump was angry at all the Democratic attacks linking him to Project 2025 — and with good reason. It was true and it was dragging him down.
However, LGBTQs and others cannot stop explaining to people how dangerous this document is for all Americans. And while Democrats may have won the battle over this one, the war is far from finished. The Heritage Foundation reportedly released new talking points in recent days trying to distance Project 2025 from Trump, but as we noted a few weeks ago, former Trump officials' fingerprints are all over this master plan.
As Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, stated Tuesday, "The Heritage Foundation and its leaders can run but cannot hide. No resignation will distract us from the dangerous Project 2025 plan they have put forward that would do irreparable damage to our democracy and strip away the progress we have made for LGBTQ people, people of color, women, and other marginalized communities."
It's just another example of how conservatives are weird — they want to tell us how to live, what to do with our bodies, and who we can associate with, what events we can attend. That's not freedom, that's subjugation.
Never miss a story! Keep up to date on the latest news, arts, politics, entertainment, and nightlife.
Sign up for the Bay Area Reporter's free weekday email newsletter. You'll receive our newsletters and special offers from our community partners.
Support California's largest LGBTQ newsroom. Your one-time, monthly, or annual contribution advocates for LGBTQ communities. Amplify a trusted voice providing news, information, and cultural coverage to all members of our community, regardless of their ability to pay -- Donate today!