What does "weird" even mean? Why the vagueness works — and why it's driving MAGA nuts

Almost as soon as Democrats started circulating the word "weird" as a primary attack on Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, the second-guessing began. Because some progressives can't help but turn to self-parody, we heard concerns that "weird" is a stigmatizing term that could be hurtful to those who "self-identify as weird." Some journalists got fussy about the word weird, because it violates a powerful convention of good writing: Be precise in your word choice. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post worried that "weird" could "downplay the threat" of Trumpism by "making Trump seem merely daring or irreverent." Historian and blogger Erik Loomis wrote, "It's not so much that Trump is weird ... as [that] he is probably the single worst human being in American political history."

As a writer myself, I shared this initial irritation at the word "weird." Yes, I laughed when I read the campaign memo from Vice President Kamala Harris telling reporters that Trump is both "old and quite weird." I snickered at the clip of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a sudden meme-hero, saying, "These are weird people on the other side."

But I also squirmed for the same reason as a lot of other people: "Weird" is a vague term, almost impossible to define. Like many media folks who have tried to assess the weirdness of MAGA over the years, I've been drawn to more exacting adjectives: Fascistic. Sinister. Sadistic. Unhinged. Sociopathic. But "weird" is undeniably delighting everyday Americans who just find Trump and his movement alien and disgusting. Furthermore, the word puts MAGA on the defensive, to a degree I haven't seen before. Trump booster Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old man who spends his days tweeting like a 15-year-old edgelord, complained that it's "dumb & juvenile." Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., self-owned in a big way, responding, "They called us weird so I’ll call them weirder. That’s what I used to do back in high school." And this automatic self-refutation occurred on Fox News:

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As much as it pains a professional writer to admit this, "weird" works because of its vagueness and ambiguity, not despite it. "Weird" has an array of connotations, possibly dozens or hundreds. It can encompass a staggering number of diverse offenses the MAGA forces commit against decency, democracy, human rights and good taste. "Weird" is big enough to cover everything from Trump's tacky branded sneakers to proposals for genital inspections of student athletes.

And because "weird" can mean so many different things, it baits those who feel attacked into dumb definitional debates. These kinds of arguments over terminology can get ugly quickly, but what's unusual in this case is that they're redounding to the left's benefit. When conservatives attempt to respond with "No, you're the weird ones," gambit, they invariably cite the good kind of "weird," often with fun and life-affirming examples: drag shows, or the way Harris laughs at dopey mom jokes. Right-wing "weird," in contrast, tends to be creepy and obsessive, and centers on things like shaming women for being unmarried and having cats, or on whether Kamala Harris' ancestry fits with Donald Trump's bizarre conceptions of racial purity.

Trump proved how getting defensive over the term "weird" only proves the charge. "Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not," he raged in a hilariously weird effort to rebut the insult on Thursday. Politico snidely called this as an attempt "to play an Uno reverse card."

Trump should know better. Vague accusations or opaque language to draw people into a debate is a highly effective trolling technique, long practiced by MAGA provocateurs. Trump is an ignoramus in most respects, but he's a proven master of this particular strategy. He regularly says things that could have multiple meanings, each with a different implied or possible level of harm, inciting lengthy disagreements about what he "really" meant.

Consider Trump's recent speech at the Turning Point Believers Summit in Florida, where he said that if he's elected, Christians "won’t have to vote anymore," because "it will be fixed." Since this person literally tried to steal the 2020 election, it was reasonable to conclude that he was threatening to end democracy for good. But of course that turned into a massive quibble-fest, with Trump's defenders arguing that he simply meant that he'll fix all the problems in America, and Christians won't have to sully themselves with voting anymore. (No, it doesn't make sense. That's part of the troll.)

Trying to parse what a consummate liar like Trump "means" with any given utterance is almost always a waste of time. By being deliberately confusing, he kicked off a round of discourse that benefited his campaign in multiple ways. He managed to both reframe not-voting as a social good and to disavow his obvious anti-democratic views at the same time. He was able to communicate what sounded an awful lot like a promise of fascist revolution while also painting his opponents as "hysterical" for suggesting he would ever do such a thing. Whatever he "really" meant, he got people discussing something that was previously out of bounds in this country, which is whether an aspiring dictator would be doing you a favor by taking away the burden of self-governance.

Trump uses this technique to normalize previously off-limits ideas all the time. His infamous "very fine people" comment, in response to the 2017 white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, is a classic example. Seven years later, people are still arguing over whether he really meant to call violent neo-Nazis "fine people," as if it were a whole lot better if he was just talking about other racists who showed up. His comments this week, accusing Harris of being dishonest about her racial heritage, are playing out the same way. There's been an explosion of chatter about what he was trying to say with the blatantly false claim that "she happened to turn Black." Is he trying to revive 19th-century "race science?" Is he accusing Harris of being a liar? Ultimately, such questions matter a lot less than the impact, which is to revive what should have been a long-settled debate a nonwhite person can be a legitimate presidential candidate.

But just because this kind of deliberate ambiguity can be used for evil doesn't mean it can't also be used for good. Progressives should not hesitate to provoke heated discussions about what is or isn't "weird," whether it's always bad to be "weird" or what the good kinds might be. Those kinds of debates will keep the spotlight on the MAGA-specific behaviors that most Americans consider pretty doggone weird, from the intense obsession with other people's bodies and sex lives to the pod-people cult of the modern-day Republican Party to Trump's old-school racist skull-measuring impulses. Keep on making Republicans deny that they're weird. The longer these battles rage on, the more they'll keep on proving how well it fits.