'The Stupid Party': 10 Idiotic Things Trump and His Supporters Have Said About the Harris-Walz Ticket
The Republican candidate and his rattled campaign have responded to the quicksilver turnaround in the 2024 race with absurdity.
As a young presidential hopeful in 2013, then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged fellow Republicans to “stop being the stupid party.”
But the former Rhodes Scholar couldn’t beat ‘em in his race against Donald Trump three years later, so he joined ‘em.
Jindal sang along with the GOP chorus last week attacking Vice President Kamala Harris for passing over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The “ONE REASON” was Shapiro’s faith, he posted on social media, because the Democratic Party has so many antisemitic voters that it “can’t put a Jewish person on the ticket.”
How stupid was that? Unlike Republicans, Democrats have put a Jewish person on their ticket (Joe Lieberman in 2000). More than 90% of Jewish people in Congress are Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer. Democratic presidents appointed seven of the eight Jewish people ever to serve on the Supreme Court including Elena Kagan, the sole current Jewish justice.
If that’s not enough, Donald Trump himself proceeded to call Shapiro “a terrible guy…not very popular with anybody.” Not only did that undercut allies like Jindal pointing to religion, it was stupid on its own terms: Shapiro boasts a 60% approval rating.
That’s just one of many idiotic eruptions from Trump and his rattled campaign in response to the quicksilver turnaround in the 2024 race. Consider these 10 other nonsensical claims:
“DEI hire.” Many Republicans have persuaded themselves of the fiction that White men are now the real victims of discrimination. So they immediately disparaged Trump’s new Black female opponent as an unqualified “diversity, equity and inclusion” candidate - even though millions of voters have advanced her career. That proved so offensive that House Speaker Mike Johnson admonished colleagues to avoid racism and sexism.
“She became a Black person.” Ignoring Johnson, Trump insisted absurdly that Harris had recently flipped her identification from Indian-American to Black for political gain. Born of an Indian mother and a Black father, she has always been both. Harris began attending historically-black Howard University as a teenager.
“Laffin’ Kamala.” Trump and his allies mock the way Harris laughs – underscoring the contrast between his angry public persona and her happy one, which has ignited Democratic enthusiasm. Characteristically, he taunts Harris by mispronouncing and misspelling her name but this too has fallen flat.
The Harris “coup.” Trump expected to rout Biden, and now chafes at the unfairness of facing the surging Harris. So the defeated politician who incited the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection accuses Democrats of an unconstitutional “coup” to switch nominees. Alas, the constitution doesn’t apply; political parties can nominate whomever they want. Democrats pushed Biden aside because they anticipated the same result Trump did.
The “Kamala Crash.” Trump rushed to link Harris’ emergence with last Monday’s stock market decline. By week’s end, the market’s recovery exposed that as hogwash.
“The fake crowd.” His ego bruised by large Harris campaign audiences, Trump made the insane claim that the thousands cheering her didn’t exist and were mere images generated by artificial intelligence. Suckers who believe this lack intelligence of any kind.
“She wants no Merry Christmas.” Trump aims to revive the right-wing culture war trope that Harris and her party disdain Christmas traditions. Like the ex-president himself, the claim is old, tired and addled.
“Tampon Tim.” Seeking a catchy way of portraying Walz as radical, Trump allies adopted this moniker over Minnesota’s policy of requiring schools to provide students with free tampons. But helping those who can’t afford menstrual products has gone mainstream, with 28 states (including Alabama, Missouri, and six of the seven 2024 battlegrounds) requiring and/or financing the same policy.
“Stolen valor.” Trump running mate J.D. Vance seized on Walz’s descriptions of his 24 years in the Army National Guard to accuse him of claiming combat service, even though Walz never did except by tortured inference. That and other Guard-related nitpicks ring especially hollow on behalf of a former president who disdains casualties of war and dodged Vietnam by faking a foot injury.
The “bro hug.” Donald Trump Jr. ridiculed Walz for clasping his wife's hand of 30 years before embracing her on stage at his debut rally. Coming from the divorced son of a twice-divorced father, that’s rich – and dumb.
This is not an exhaustive list of the blather deserving a “gold medal in political flailing,” as David Plouffe, the former Barack Obama campaign manager now advising Harris, put it. It doesn’t include Trump aide Stephen Miller’s QAnon-flavored claim that Harris promotes “sex slavery,” the Trump campaign calling lifelong Midwesterner Walz a “West Coast wannabe,” or Trump himself assailing the popular Republican governor of must-win Georgia.
To be sure, Trump once declared “I love the poorly educated” for a reason. MAGA die-hards lap up this gruel.
But the three-time Republican nominee has good reason to fear swing voters have lost any taste for it. Democrats won’t “bring back Crooked Joe,” as he has publicly fantasized. The sound system at Trump’s Montana rally last week blasted out the theme song for a movie: ‘Titanic.’
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And yet, their candidate is polling at almost 49%. What does that say about the populace? A democracy is only as strong as its most stupid participant.
If tRUMP hadn't said multiple stupid things, then I would be worried thinking he may have evolved into a normal human being.