Republicans Are Getting Triggered by “Woke” Olympics

The Summer Olympics are underway in Paris, and the right is getting triggered.

In an interview on the Fox Business Channel Monday morning, Representative Ryan Zinke was asked about new FBI confirmation that Donald Trump was actually struck by a bullet after a gunman in Pennsylvania tried to assassinate him earlier this month. Zinke, for some reason, decided to connect it to conservatives’ grievances over the Olympics.

“Trump is as much of a movement as it is a candidate, because America is not comfortable where we are. We’re not comfortable watching the Olympics. Disgusting display, dishonorable. We’re not comfortable with the woke. We’re not comfortable about getting beat up on foreign shores,” Zinke said.

Zinke was likely referring to Paris’s colorful display during the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday, which was decried by conservatives for its flamboyance and unabashed celebration of the LGBTQ+ community. In particular, right-wing religious figures and politicians claimed that one scene in the ceremony that featured drag queens, a transgender model, and a nearly naked blue man at a table of food was a disrespectful representation of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper, which depicts Jesus Christ’s last meal with his apostles.

Several conservatives criticized the ceremony and scene, including Speaker Mike Johnson, who posted on X (formerly Twitter) that it was “shocking and insulting to Christian people around the world.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called it an “anti-Christian” and “satanic, trans, and occult” opening ceremony.

Despite the right-wing meltdown, art experts pointed out that the scene was an homage to a different painting, The Feast of the Gods, based on Greek mythology. The blue man represented Dionysius, the Greek god of feasting and wine, said the ceremony’s creative director, Thomas Jolly, who flat-out denied any connection to The Last Supper.

“I think it was pretty clear. There’s Dionysus who arrives at the table.… Why is he there? Because he’s the god of feasting, of wine, and the father of Sequana, the goddess of the River Seine,” Jolly told a French TV station. 

It’s one thing to make a religious argument against the Olympic opening ceremony, but it was created and staged by the French and does not reflect U.S. politics, except in how conservatives have reacted to it. Most people have turned their attention to the Olympics’ actual sports now, but conservatives, in all of their weirdness today, still can’t stop obsessing over anything they think is an affront to them.

Former President Donald Trump has a serious problem with white men: They don’t want to vote for him. At least, not the way they did in 2016.

To plug the hole in Trump’s boat, the former president brought in Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, intending to “leave him in Pennsylvania” and secure blue-collar workers across the Rust Belt—namely, white men. Trump’s advisers believe that Vance could help keep white male voters on board, according to The Washington Post.

Trump’s problem with white guys is nothing new. In April, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey found that the demographics that historically supported Trump have begun to shift and the groundswell of support from white male voters that Trump had experienced in 2016 was dissipating.

In 2016, Trump was able to fire up his white men without college degrees by focusing his campaign rhetoric on immigration and white grievance, or the idea that white people are the victims of discrimination, ideas that remain key among Republican voters, according to NPR.

But by 2020, it seemed that argument had already started to lose ground among white voters across the educational spectrum, who began to defect to Joe Biden’s camp. While Trump still came out on top in securing white male voters, the difference between their turnout in 2016 and 2020 was the nail in the coffin of his reelection bid.

Things only got worse from there. According to NPR, between 2020 and 2024, Biden saw a 24-point bump among white men with college degrees, a group that has historically backed Republicans.

Trump has begun to experience a slip in swing states, as well. Polling from late 2023 and early 2024 in Wisconsin, a key battleground state, showed that Trump’s net favorability rating among white men had dropped 22 points, from plus eight points to minus 14 points. Trump saw major slips with self-identified Republicans, rural men, and white men who did not attend college, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. These groups have a sizable overlap and make up a crucial part of Trump’s base.

In an effort to reclaim these voters, Trump tapped Vance to be his running mate, as someone who could theoretically appeal to both college-educated and non–college educated white men, touting his widely popularized white working-class roots alongside his degree from Yale Law School.

“You need a white guy to get the white guys we lost. The Hillbilly Elegy guy is the one to do it,” MAGA political operative Vish Burra told The Bulwark. “Trump needs Vance because he’s good on camera and he sounds right. He’s not one of these people you can dismiss as a MAGAloid or a barbarian.”

So far, it’s not totally clear that Vance is up for the task of white guy retrieval.

While there was plenty of initial excitement over Vance’s selection, a YouGov poll taken the week his nomination was announced found that Vance was viewed “very” favorably by only 18 percent of male respondents and “very” unfavorably by 28 percent. The results were identical among white respondents.

The same poll found that male respondents and white respondents were about evenly split in supporting versus disapproving of Trump picking Vance.

CNN analyst Harry Enten reported last week that Vance averaged a net favorability of negative six points across all polls, a number that was far lower than any other vice presidential nominee in history, including former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

At a Minnesota rally Saturday, Trump confused Representative Ilhan Omar for another Muslim woman of Congress, Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib.

“Ilhan Omar,” Trump began in a rambling speech. “She went to a speech when I was … first running.… This lunatic was in the audience, she started screaming. I said, ‘Who the hell is that?’ And it’s the same crazy person that I watch every night. She’s nuts.”

Omar responded to Trump’s remarks on X, writing, “Trump telling dangerous anti-Muslim lies is nothing new. But I have never attended one of his speeches. He is lying again or losing his memory.” Omar continued, “Trump should step aside as his criminal convictions and continued legal troubles have clearly taken a toll on the 78 year old conman.”

Shedding some light on the matter, The Independent reported that it was not Omar but Tlaib who interrupted Trump’s 2016 speech to the Detroit Economic Club prior to her election to the House.

Then a public interest attorney, Tlaib penned an op-ed explaining her decision at the time. “I told Trump that ‘our children deserve better’ and I asked him to provide a better example to our kids. I implored him to read the U.S. Constitution. And then I was grabbed by several security personnel who physically moved me to the exit while I continued to express my concerns,” Tlaib wrote.

When a video of the disruption resurfaced in 2019, Trump made similar comments about Tlaib, then getting her name right. But the former president has proven increasingly prone to mix-ups in recent months. Last week, he mistook Vice President Kamala Harris for Representative Nancy Pelosi. Earlier this year, he repeatedly confused Nikki Haley with Pelosi.

In the past, Trump has insisted he intentionally muddles his opponents’ names for rhetorical effect. This time, campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung admitted to Trump’s error, telling The Independent, with the poise and directness one might expect from Trump’s team, “It’s common to mistake the two deranged and radical individuals who both want open borders just like failed Border Czar Kamala Harris, are mentally unstable, and promote an anti-America agenda that seeks to shred the Constitution to pieces so they can burn it just like they do the American flag.”

Since Biden withdrew from the race, Trump is now the oldest candidate to run for president.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has a response for all the critics who have been calling him weird for the past week.

On X (formerly Twitter) Sunday night, Vance posted a video with the caption “JD Vance is weird.” The innocuous video shows Vice President Kamala Harris telling CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “My pronouns are she, her, and hers” before a presidential town hall in 2019.

Last week, Harris directly called Vance “weird and creepy,” following the many terrible reports that have come out about him in recent days. The Ohio senator is now trying to paint Harris as weird for mentioning pronouns, but it’s not even a scandal and pales in comparison to all of the negative attention Vance has received since Trump chose him as his running mate. Much of the internet seemed to agree.

Last week, Vance started out with a campaign speech that fell flat after he failed to land a joke about Diet Mountain Dew. Old remarks from 2021 where he called Democrats “childless cat ladies” drew a backlash from celebrities and lawmakers alike, and a false rumor about a sexual act with a sofa continues to circulate online. He’s losing support from Trump’s allies, and even Anthony Scaramucci called him out.

Posting a five-year-old clip where Harris doesn’t even come off as weird (but Cuomo does), with transphobic undertones, isn’t going to do Vance any favors, particularly with younger voters. It’s another example of Vance failing to land a punch line, and at this point, Vance is quickly being seen as the worst vice presidential candidate ever.

Former President Donald Trump shared a slew of videos online attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, after a favorability poll aired on Fox News found she was leading him in a few key swing states. 

The new poll, conducted July 22–24 and released Sunday, found that Harris’s approval rating had surpassed Trump’s in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.* 

Many online predicted that Trump would be incensed over the results. “The ketchup is going to hit the wall in Mar-a-Lago after this new Fox News poll,” remarked former Clinton White House aide Keith Boykin on X (formerly Twitter).

Within hours, Trump posted five separate videos on Truth Social of one of his longtime favorite Fox News hosts, Mark Levin, whom Rolling Stone once called a “bomb-throwing Trump sycophant,” attacking Harris.  

In one of the videos from Life, Liberty & Levin, Levin labeled Harris as a “rabid Marxist scholar,” specifically decrying her past statements about the need for equity—the idea that every person should be given access to the resources needed to be successful—so that, as Harris put it, every citizen could “end up in the same place.”

“‘So we all end up in the same place’? Doesn’t this sound like we’re all going to end up in a gulag?” Levin said. He called equity a “prescription for tyranny and totalitarianism,” ranting that it was “not the government’s job” to improve the quality of life of American citizens. 

In another video posted to Trump’s account, Levin criticized Harris for comparing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Ku Klux Klan for causing fear and intimidation in immigrant communities. “The combination of stupidity and arrogance is on full display, right here,” said Levin. 

Levin continued to incorrectly call her the “border czar,” although she was never responsible for border security. 

Unfortunately for Trump, arguments like Levin’s don’t seem to be nearly as convincing to the rest of America. In just one week, Harris’s overall favorability jumped from 35 percent to 43 percent and her unfavorability fell from 46 percent to 42 percent, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted on Friday and Saturday.

*This article misstated Harris’s approval rating in the Fox News poll in Michigan. It was 47 percent, the same as Trump’s.