It started when the former president attacked Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has used the word the describe Trump, running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and others on the right.
"He is weird," Trump said. "He's weird, I'm not weird, he's weird. No, he's a weird guy, he's a weird dude."
Trump continued: "See, they come up with sound bites, they always have sound bites, and one of the things is that JD and I are weird. That guy is so straight, JD is so, he's doing a great job, smart, top student, great guy, and he's not weird and I'm not weird. I mean we're a lot of things but we're not weird I will tell you, but that guy is weird."
Walz has said he uses weird to describe Trump, Vance and others on the right to take away the fear that helps give them power.
"The fascists depend on fear," he said in July. "But we're not afraid of weird people. We're a little bit creeped out, but we're not afraid."
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz may have finally picked the lock to Donald Trump's fragile psyche and exposed it to a kryptonite he's simply unable to coherently counter. Trump has simply been cowed by Harris' and Walz' ability to correctly define his endless bombast, sociopathy and grievance as something everyone who doesn't think and act like Trump innately understands - As Anand Giridharadas remarked this morning on tv, it's ironic that Donald Trump is now talking about IVF because it's also an anagram of Trump's current vibe: I'm Very Frightened. For the first time in Trump's foray into politics, he's found opponents that not only don't fear him, they largely ignore him when he staggers from one personal attack to the next, unable to find any traction for his threadbare worn-out shtick.