Why Harris and Democrats keep calling Trump and Vance 'weird'

Vice President Kamala Harris and her Democratic allies are emphasizing a new line of criticism against Republicans — branding Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as “weird."

Democrats are applying the label with gusto in interviews and online, notably to Vance's comments on abortion and his previous suggestion that political leaders who didn't have biological children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.

The “weird” message appears to have given Democrats a narrative advantage that they rarely had when President Joe Biden was still running for reelection. Trump's campaign, which so often shapes political discussions with the former president's pronouncements, has spent days trying to flip the script by highlighting things about Democrats it says are weird.

“I don’t know who came up with the message, but I salute them,” said David Karpf, a strategic communication professor at George Washington University.

Karpf said labeling Republican comments as “weird” is the sort of concise take that resonates quickly with Harris supporters. Plus, Karpf noted, “it frustrates opponents, leading them to further amplify it through off-balance responses.”

“So far, at least, Trump-Vance has been incapable of finding an effective response,” Karpf said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who is on Harris’ short list for vice president, called Trump and Vance “just weird” last week in an MSNBC interview, which the Democratic Governors Association — of which Walz is chair — amplified in a post on X. Walz reiterated the characterization Sunday on CNN, referencing Trump's repeated mentions of the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film “Silence of the Lambs” in stump speeches.

Responding to Trump's Thursday appearance on Fox News, the Harris campaign — in a news release with the subject line “Statement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance” — included “Trump is old and quite weird?” in a bulleted list of takeaways.

A day later, multiple news releases from the Harris campaign described her opponents similarly, declaring simply that “JD Vance is weird” in part due to his stances on abortion, and Harris' campaign spokesperson saying that Vance had “spent all week making headlines for his out-of-touch, weird ideas.”

Two of Harris' allies, Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, on Friday posted a video on X calling Vance's past comments about limiting the political power of childless Americans “a super weird idea.”

And then, at her first fundraiser since becoming the Democrats’ likely White House nominee, Harris used the characterization herself, calling out some of Trump's "wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying, it is just plain weird.”

“I mean that’s the box you put that in, right?" she added.

Many of Democrats' comments appear to be allusions to a 2021 interview with Vance in which he slammed some prominent Democrats without biological children — including Harris — as “childless cat ladies” with “no direct stake” in America.

But Harris' own characterization of Trump as “weird” may date back even further. In his 2021 book, political reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote that Harris reportedly gathered with aides in 2018 to prepare for her own presidential bid.

As staff aimed to prepare her for how she'd react if, during a debate, Trump stood over her as he did Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, Harris reportedly quipped, “‘I’d turn around and say, 'Why are you being so weird? What’s wrong with you?'”

On Sunday, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung posted video of Walz calling Trump and Vance “weird” as he stumped for Harris and said the likely Democratic nominee and her backers were themselves out of line for “trying to gaslight everyone into thinking the shooting was staged,” a reference to the assassination attempt at Trump's rally in Pennsylvania.

More broadly, some of Trump's allies have angled to turn the conversation back to Harris and what they portray as her failed policy ideas.

Donald Trump Jr., the former president's oldest son, took to X on Monday to ask, “You know what’s really weird? Soft on crime politicians like Kamala allowing illegal aliens out of prison so they can violently assault Americans.”

On Saturday, Vance reposted an X video Trump Jr. shared in which Harris talked about “climate anxiety, which is fear of the future and the unknown of whether it makes sense for you to even think about having children.”

“It’s almost like these people don’t want young people starting families or something," Vance wrote. "Really weird stuff.”

Republicans have long shared clips of Harris' laugh and some of her jokes or stories to try to make the vice president seem weird — notably an anecdote she told last year about her mother scolding her, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”

The “coconut tree” story has itself become a Democratic in-joke in the days since Harris took over the campaign. Many of her supporters have embraced coconut emojis in their online accounts.

Calling Republicans “weird” may be a way to take Republicans’ previous tactics and make them their own, said Matt Sienkiewicz, a communication professor at Boston College.

University at Buffalo political communication professor Jacob Neiheisel compared the “weird” message to Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 attempt to portray Barack Obama as a celebrity with no real accomplishments.

“At a functional level, I think that this might be part of a concerted attempt to mitigate some of the longstanding efforts on the right to paint Harris in a similar way,” Neiheisel said.

Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

Follow the AP's coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, left, and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, attend the Republican National Convention, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. Vice President Kamala Harris and her Democratic allies are increasingly branding Trump and Vance as "weird." Democrats are applying the label with gusto in interviews and online. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

AVIGNON, France (AP) — A 71-year-old French man acknowledged in court Tuesday that he drugged his then-wife and invited dozens of men to rape her over nearly a decade, as well as raping her himself. He pleaded with her, and their three children, for forgiveness.

“Today I maintain that, along with the other men here, I am a rapist,″ Dominique Pélicot told the court. “They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.”

Dominique Pélicot's testimony is the most important moment so far in a trial that has shocked and gripped the country, and raised new awareness about sexual violence. Many also hope his testimony will shed some light — to try to understand the unthinkable.

While he previously confessed to investigators, the court testimony will be crucial for the panel of judges to decide on the fate of some 50 other men standing trial alongside him. Many deny having raped Gisèle Pélicot, saying they were manipulated by her then-husband or claiming they believed she was consenting.

Gisèle Pélicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France for agreeing to waive her anonymity in the case, letting the trial be public, and appearing openly in front of the media. She is expected to speak in court after her ex-husband’s testimony on Tuesday.

Under French law, the proceedings inside the courtroom cannot be filmed or photographed. Dominique Pélicot is brought to the court through a special entrance inaccessible for the media, because he and some other defendants are being held in custody during the trial. Defendants who are not in custody come to the trial wearing surgical masks or hoods to avoid having their faces filmed or photographed.

After days of uncertainty due to his medical state, Dominique Pélicot appeared in court Tuesday and told judges he acknowledged all the charges against him.

His much-awaited testimony was delayed by days after he fell ill, suffering from a kidney stone and urinary infection, his lawyers said.

Seated in a wheelchair, Pélicot spoke to the court for an hour, from his early life to years of abuse against his now ex-wife.

Expressing remorse, his voice trembling and at times barely audible, he sought to explain events that he said scarred his childhood and planted the seed of vice in him.

“One is not born a pervert, one becomes a pervert,” Pélicot told judges, after recounting, sometimes in tears, being raped by a male nurse in hospital when he was 9 years old and then being forced to take part in a gang rape at age 14.

Pélicot also spoke of the trauma endured when his parents took a young girl in the family, and witnessing his father’s inappropriate behavior toward her.

“My father used to do the same thing with the little girl,'' he said. “After my father’s death, my brother said that men used to come to our house.”

At 14, he said, he asked his mother if he could leave the house, but “she didn’t let me.”

“I don’t really want to talk about this, I am just ashamed of my father. In the end, I didn’t do any better,'' he said.

Asked about his feelings toward his wife, Pélicot said she did not deserve what he did.

“From my youth, I remember only shocks and traumas, forgotten partly thanks to her. She did not deserve this, I acknowledge it,” he said in tears.

At that moment, Gisèle Pélicot, standing across the room, facing him across a group of dozens of defendants sitting in between them, put her sunglasses back on.

Later, Dominique Pélicot said, “I was crazy about her. She replaced everything. I ruined everything.”

A security agent caught Pélicot in 2020 filming videos under women’s skirts in a supermarket, according to court documents. Police searched Pélicot’s house and electronic devices, and found thousands of photos and videos of men engaging in sexual acts with Gisèle Pélicot while she appears to lie unconscious on their bed.

With the recordings, police were able to track down a majority of the 72 suspects they were seeking.

Gisèle Pélicot and her husband of 50 years had three children. When they retired, the couple left the Paris region to move into a house in Mazan, a small town in Provence.

When police officers called her in for questioning in late 2020, she initially told them her husband was “a great guy,″ according to legal documents. They then showed her some photos. She left her husband and they are now divorced.

He faces 20 years in prison if convicted. Besides Pélicot, 50 other men, aged 26 to 74, are standing trial.

Bernadette Tessonière, a 69-year-old retiree who lives a half-hour drive from Avignon, where the trial is taking place, arrived outside the courthouse at 7:15 a.m. to make sure she would secure a seat in the closely watched case.

“How is it possible that in 50 years of communal life, one can live next to someone who hides his life so well? This is scary,” she said, while standing in a line outside the courthouse. “I don’t have much hope that what he did can be explained, but he is at least going to give some elements.”

FILE - Gisele Pelicot speaks to media as she leaves the Avignon court house, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)

FILE - Gisele Pelicot, left, arrives in the Avignon court house, in Avignon, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)

FILE - Gisele Pelicot, left, arrives in the Avignon court house, in Avignon, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)