A number of months in the past, earlier than he was the Democratic nominee for vice-president alongside working mate Kamala Harris, Tim Walz struck gold when he identified in an interview simply how “bizarre” the Republican celebration has grow to be over the previous few years.

It was a phrase that basically struck a chord – not simply with Democrats, who’ve struggled to articulate the shift of their opponents’ ideological positions since 2015, however with Republicans as effectively, who took the slight very, very personally, and didn’t appear to have a response to it.

I imply, how may they, after two of their greatest representatives on the world stage – Donald Trump and Elon Musk – met at a long-anticipated rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday night and gave us… no matter that was?

In concept, the occasion ought to have been a slam dunk – Trump returning to the positioning of his tried assassination, defiant within the face of demise, and accompanied by the richest man on this planet and “actual life Tony Stark” (sure, we actually used to name him that).

As an alternative what we bought was the propaganda equal of an air ball, as the 2 males’s mixed presence in some way managed to be even lower than the sum of its elements – presumably placing us effectively into damaging territory. They unfold lies, they infected political tensions, they usually focused the weak – all in a day’s work for 2 males who may afford to pay individuals to show them social expertise, however as an alternative select to be the poster boys for “white nationalism, however in some way even stupider”.

At this level, although, it’s a must to surprise if “bizarre” is the best phrase anymore. Possibly “embarrassing” could be higher. The photographs to come back out of the occasion definitely are – one exhibits Musk in the midst of a jaunty little half-hop whereas Trump seems to be on like a disenchanted father; one other has Musk leaning in to speak to Trump with a glance on his face that reads as “lastly, the approval my father by no means gave me”.

However I do know I’m not likely being honest, there – individuals hardly ever look good in candid pictures. What’s truly embarrassing is that Musk turned as much as do the rally in any respect, after Trump summarily humiliated him on Reality Social, a Trump-owned competitor to Musk’s personal horrible web site, simply two quick years in the past:

“When Elon Musk got here to the White Home asking me for assistance on all of his many subsidised initiatives,” wrote the previous president, “whether or not it’s electrical automobiles that don’t drive lengthy sufficient, driverless automobiles that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, with out which subsidies he’d be nugatory, and telling me how he was an enormous Trump fan and Republican, I may have mentioned, ‘Drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have executed it…”

Nicely, I suppose he lastly did it, didn’t he? Truly, dropping on his knees and begging would most likely have been rather less embarrassing – not only for Musk, who Trump humiliated, however for Trump too, who in holding the rally tacitly admitted that he wanted marketing campaign assist from any individual he deems “nugatory”.

Possibly the phrase is “disgusting”? That’s the phrase I’d use to explain Elon Musk’s prediction that “If [Republicans] don’t vote, this would be the final election”. It’s the form of scaremongering that no democracy ought to must climate, but it surely’s doubly disgusting when it occurs at a rally for the man who oversaw an tried rebel on the earlier election.

Has Musk forgotten that, of the 2 candidates, just one has described themselves as a “dictator”? Or that Individuals “gained’t must vote anymore” if he wins? I can’t think about he has, to be trustworthy – if I needed to guess, I’d say he’s simply speaking out of his SpaceX.

Possibly “pathetic” is healthier? It was definitely fairly pathetic, the best way Trump hit the identical outdated drained speaking factors. Right here he performed all of the hits, treating us to such classics as “Joe Biden is paying for intercourse change operations for unlawful immigrants”, and “my political opponents tried to kill me”. At one level he even boasted about not needing a teleprompter… whereas studying from a teleprompter.

However I suppose that if I actually needed to decide only one phrase to explain the American political proper in its present type – one phrase that summed up all their failings, each ideological and private – I suppose it must be “losers”.

It’s the celebration of losers like Musk, determined for validation however completely incapable of incomes it. It’s the celebration of losers like JD Vance, who is aware of that he can’t truly again up any of his so-called beliefs, and so makes up tales about immigrants consuming individuals’s pets to frighten voters into being on his facet. It’s the celebration of losers like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who appears to sincerely imagine that “they” – whoever “they” are – can management the climate.

And hopefully, come 5 November, will probably be the celebration of two-time loser Donald Trump – and we’ll by no means have to listen to any of his bizarre, embarrassing, disgusting, pathetic ramblings ever once more.