Another day, another ruthless assessment of former president Donald Trump courtesy of Stephen King.
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The acclaimed author has made it his mission to lambast the Republican presidential hopeful ever since he first announced his candidacy in 2016 (we now refer to that as the “simpler times”), and as the election inches ever closer, King shows no signs of slowing down.
King’s criticisms of Trump range from flowery and poetic — like you’d expect from a best-selling author whose books contain copious amounts of lore — to straightforward and frank, as is the case with his latest Trump takedown on X.
Taking to his least favorite platform on Oct. 16, King offered his latest (and perhaps shortest) assessment of what could be the next commander in chief. Is it a criticism of Trump’s policies or an introspective reflection on what led us here, you might ask? Well, no, it’s a two-word tweet that somehow manages to be just as searing as a multi-page dossier.
“Trump’s weird,” King wrote, clearly taking X’s character count function extremely seriously. Of course, it’s hardly the first time the term weird has been levelled against the former president. Earlier in the presidential race, VP candidate Tim Walz led a Democratic Party-wide effort to brand Trump, and by extension the GOP more broadly, as “weird,” and the term really stuck.
It was seen as a move away from branding Trump not as an existential threat to democracy (two things can be true), but simply as the kind of bizarre family member who makes weird comments at Thanksgiving dinner. So sticky was the term that it was even used by Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, and prompted widespread fury from Trump supporters and Fox News anchors.
While it seems somewhat unprovoked, King’s resurfacing of the term is not without merit, especially considering Trump’s more recent antics. From hyper-fixating on a new biopic about himself, to discussing Harris’ seasonal allergies, and engaging in a 30-minute robot dance during a town hall event, the former president isn’t exactly working overtime to try and beat the “weird” allegations.
And that’s not even accounting for the string of weirdness that preceded those moments, like name-dropping Hannibal Lecter, or musing ad nauseam about sharks and batteries. Perhaps the combination of all these things is what propelled King’s latest message, but given the author’s rapid-fire reactions to everything Trump does, it surely won’t be the last we hear from him as the presidential race nears the finish line.
In the past few months alone, King has compared Trump to a villain from one of his most famous novels, said Trump’s “brain is turning to mush,” criticized Trump for mansplaining during the debate, and said the GOP candidate has “no business being near the levers of power.”
All of that while promoting the latest film adaptation of his book The Life of Chuck, which stars Tom Hiddleston and premiered last month. As it turns out, King is never too busy for a two-word, 11-character count takedown of Trump.
Between King and his fellow famous Trump critics like Bette Midler and Mark Hamill, we can rest assured that our X feeds will be peppered with colorful character portrayals of the former president for the foreseeable future. That is, until someone like Dennis Quaid comes along.