AOC: Tim Walz’s Non-Weird Masculinity Is Driving Trump, Vance “Nuts”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told Stephen Colbert on Thursday that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is driving Donald Trump and J.D. Vance “nuts.”

“I think that Trump and Vance, they think they have some kind of like, monopoly over masculinity,” Ocasio-Cortez said on The Late Show.

The Republican nominees have been freaking out ever since Walz first called them “weird” a few weeks ago, and have responded by desperately attacking the Minnesota governor’s son, wife, military history, and governing record.

“Walz has kinda shown up—he’s a football coach, he was the head of the gay-straight alliance as the football coach,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “And he’s like, ‘Actually, this stuff is weird, and why are you acting like that?’ And I think it’s driving them nuts, because he’s showing another way to be an upright man in America.”

The Colbert crowd roared in approval.

Speaking earlier this week in Pennsylvania, and definitely not at all rattled by these attacks, Trump assured his followers that he is the normal one. Referring to Walz, he said, “This whack job said we are weird, that J.D. and I are weird. I think we are extremely normal people—like you!”

But Trump seems especially keen on deflecting the insult from himself, not Vance. According to The New York Times, a GOP donor at an August 2 fundraiser asked about the “weird” label, to which Trump replied: “Not about me. They’re saying that about J.D.”

Amid a year of legal woes that added up to roughly half a billion dollars, Donald Trump has been leeching cash from an eyebrow-raising source: his campaign.

According to a CNN analysis of federal campaign finance data, Trump and associated political groups have funneled more than $28 million in campaign donations into his businesses since he first ran for office in 2015.

Other Republicans are reportedly also using their campaign budgets on Trump’s businesses in order to earn favor with the conservative populist. Republican candidates and conservative investors, including Bernie Moreno, former Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, and Arizona Senate hopeful Kari Lake, have spent more on Trump’s businesses this year than at any point since 2016, reported CNN. Those expenses added up by way of “Mar-a-Lago fundraisers, stays at Trump’s hotels, and flights on the former president’s private jet,” the outlet reported.

Federal campaigns and PACs spent nearly $3.2 million on Trump properties in the first half of 2024 alone, though 80 percent of that came from Trump’s own campaign funds as well as political groups aligned with the Republican presidential nominee, reported CNN.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, told CNN that “committees are paying the fair market rate for all venues and services” offered by Trump businesses.

But campaign finance experts see the trend as yet another signal that the Republican Party has completely bent the knee to the former reality TV star.

“He’s clearly now in complete control of the Republican Party,” Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program, told CNN. “Patronizing his businesses has become one of the accepted ways that candidates and public officials express their loyalty to the party’s leader.”

Donald Trump once referred to cryptocurrencies as a scam, but as of this week, he appears to be all in on the digital coin.

On Thursday, the Republican nominee and his family announced the creation of “The Trump DeFi Project”—short for decentralized finance—to platform cryptocurrencies.

“For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites,” Trump wrote online in a post echoed by his son, Don Jr. “It’s time we take a stand—together.”

Few details are known about the Trump DeFi project, including its official launch date or its purpose, but the “official” Telegram channel of the project, “The DeFiant Ones,” promises updates in the coming days.

Trump has increasingly tried to frame himself as a pro-crypto candidate in this election cycle. At a Bitcoin Conference in Nashville in July, Trump promised to build out a “strategic national bitcoin reserve” if elected, according to CoinDesk. But the former president’s recent investments would show that his change of heart on the digital assets isn’t all an act. Financial disclosures released earlier this month show that Trump has $7.15 million coming from a source labeled NFT INT., likely referring to his NFT series. He’s also kept a stockpile of cash in the new-wave currencies, with the disclosure listing roughly $5 million in crypto.

Trump listed his social media platform, Truth Social, at more than $50 million. Trump owns nearly 65 percent of Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, which is quickly tanking in value.

Donald Trump called in to Fox News to give his thoughts on Kamala Harris’s speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night, and he wasn’t taking it well.

Host Martha MacCallum asked Trump what he would do to regain the momentum in the race, with the Harris campaign flying high in the polls, particularly thanks to the convention.

Trump denied that Harris was doing well, saying, “No, she’s not having success, I’m having success.”

“I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters, I’m doing great with Black men, I’m doing great with women, because women want safety, they want safety, and they don’t have safety when they have somebody allowing 20 million people into our country, many of them very dangerous people,” Trump ranted.

“No, it’s only in your eyes that they have that, Martha,” Trump continued, referring to Harris’s momentum. “We’re doing very well in the polls, we’re leading in most of the polls, and in the swing states, we’re leading in almost every one of them.”

At one point, while making them claim that Harris would dramatically increase taxes, Trump was so riled up that he pressed the buttons on his phone live on the air. He was probably still steamed after having done a live play-by-play of Harris’s speech on Truth Social. In the end, Fox News actually had to cut off his rambling phone call.

It’s pretty clear that Harris’s candidacy has rattled Trump, who still hasn’t recovered from learning he wouldn’t be facing Joe Biden in November. He has struggled to come up with any effective attack against her, even drawing a blank on his trademark insults. Trump can’t bring himself to admit that he has lost a lot of ground in the latest polls, with one showing that older voters think he’s in “very poor” health. Judging by his interview Thursday night, those voters might be right.

While Kamala Harris was making her keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, Donald Trump was melting down on Truth Social.

The former president and convicted felon promised to give a “Play by Play” of her speech, and it ended up being a long string of whining.

“Too many ‘Thank yous,’ too rapidly said, what’s going on with her?” Trump began. It didn’t get any better from there.

“She’s talking about how great San Francisco was before she destroyed it, probably not a good idea!” Trump posted, accompanied by a video disparaging Harris’s record as a prosecutor in the city. And ever self-conscious, he posted “IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?” when Harris started criticizing him.

Occasionally, some of his posts veered into all-caps, probably when he was particularly upset, like when the Project 2025 manifesto was mentioned:  “LYING AGAIN ABOUT PROJECT 2025, WHICH SHE KNOWS, AND SO DO ALL DEMOCRATS, THAT I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH!” (She wasn’t lying.)

Trump closed with the emphatic message: “There will be no future under Comrade Kamala Harris, because she will take us into a Nuclear World War III! She will never be respected by the Tyrants of the World!”

Harris’s entry into the presidential race has put Trump off of his game, as he’s still unable to come up with a good insult of the vice president. He and his running mate J.D. Vance have also struggled to respond to the simple criticism that they’re weird. It must really get under Trump’s skin that the Democratic National Convention has had better ratings than the RNC, and by all accounts, Harris’s keynote address was better received than his convention speech. In the end, he’s just coming across as desperately deranged.