I knew something was calling for my attention in this interview transcript fragment, and I finally figured it out.
Trump: "Bovino is very good, but he's a pretty out there kind of a guy. It some cases that's good, maybe it wasn't good here. But when I watch some of the people I've been watching over the past few weeks, these are paid insurrectionists, these are paid agitators. These people aren't normal."
In case the above disappears, shaved to the part that caught my attention:
But when I watch some of the people I’ve been watching over the past few weeks, these are paid insurrectionists, these are paid agitators. These people aren’t normal.”
He’s talking about the Minneapolis community members protesting the sloppy actions of ICE agents, such as this one. But what is he really saying?
He’s saying they’re weird. Sound familiar?
“These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room,” Walz said in a TV interview last month.
The message started with news interviews and eventually spread like wildfire across social media with the help of young Americans. The simple terminology of labeling the other side as “weird” or “odd” is not revolutionary or sophisticated in American politics but represents a new framing for Democrats who have spent the last eight years trying to defeat Trump and Trumpism by personifying him as the greatest threat to democracy. [AP]
This is Trump for you. Not a whit of originality, whether he’s building a glorified bathroom with his name and a lot of gold, or insulting a rival. Remember the debate between Clinton and Trump? “No! You’re the thumb-puppet!” was the best he could do when accused of being Russian President Putin’s thumb-puppet, an accusation he’s never effectively rebutted.
So he and the Republicans are insulted when they’re called weird, because
Trump has spent a lot of time being friends with his base, and labeling him and his Party as weird is perceived as an attempt to drive a wedge between them.
So Trump is trying to alienate independents and Republicans with a sense of decency from the protesters in Minneapolis through the same technique. However, Walz describing the GOP as weird is not nearly the same as Trump casting aspersions on protesters defending their collective homes and persons from ICE agents who are tangibly abusing their positions and killing, and doing it on video. The latter will be far more effective in binding independents and some Republicans to the anti-Trump cause.
And now new Epstein Files are out. What will the right-wing pundits and influencers find? Clear evidence of Trump’s innocence or guilt? Or just lots of redactions? And, just for grins, will the redactions be competent this time, or easily removed once again?
