The 8 Most Absurd Moments of the 2024 Election So Far
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The Most Absurd Moments of the 2024 Election (So Far)
We are, incredibly, just now entering the 2024 general election, following two of the wildest months in recent political history. It’s been a long, strange road to get here, one made all the stranger by the news that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is running as an independent in this race, admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park and staging it as a bike accident a decade ago. I’ll come back to this one in a minute, but this is just one of many bonkers moments since the election cycle formally kicked off about a year ago, and that’s without including the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump or Joe Biden’s last-minute withdrawal from the race. Here are eight of the most absurd moments of the 2024 election so far…with more surely to come.
1. Chris Christie’s “Donald Duck” joke in the second primary debate
The GOP primary debates, held in August, September and November of last year, were mostly an opportunity for a bunch of Republican wannabes to vie (in vain) to become the VP pick for Trump, who didn’t even bother to show up. There were a lot of eye-rolling moments, like Vivek Ramaswamy’s mini-Trump act and Nikki Haley’s actual eye-rolling. But one of the strangest moments came in the second debate, when former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie looked directly into the camera to call out Trump for avoiding the debates. “You’re ducking these things,” he said. “And let me tell you what’s gonna happen. You keep doing that, no one up here is gonna call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re gonna call you…Donald Duck.’” Then he smiled, with the confidence of a man who truly believed he just ate.
2. The Ron DeSantis/Gavin Newsom “debate”
One of the more baffling moments in this election was the November 2023 so-called “The Great Red vs. Blue State Debate” between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and California Gavin Newsom, who was not running for president but certainly seemed to be setting himself up for something in the future. DeSantis’s campaign was already flailing by this point, though he wouldn’t drop out of the race for another month, and this Sean Hannity-monitored event on Fox News didn’t help one bit. There was little structure to the debate, which dug into some policy but eventually devolved into name-calling and insults. Hannity repeatedly let DeSantis interrupt and talk over Newsom, which ended up making DeSantis look worse. DeSantis also kept fidgeting and making uncomfortable faces (i.e., assuming his signature debate pose) and at one point pulled out a “poop map” of San Francisco, which did not have quite the effect he wanted.
3. RFK has a brainworm
RFK, who initially mounted a Democratic primary challenge against Biden before becoming an Independent, has mounted the most legitimate third-party challenge of the 2024 cycle, significantly edging out the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Libertarian Chase Oliver, and political activist Cornel West in the polls. He has also dominated the news with increasingly bizarre and even horrifying personal stories. One such story: that he has a literal brainworm. In May, RFK disclosed that about a decade ago, doctors found what they believed to be a dead parasite in his brain, which they suspected caused him memory loss, brain fog, and other neurological issues. To add to his health problems, RFK volunteered that his excessive consumption of tuna fish had led to him being diagnosed with mercury poisoning, which doctors told The New York Times could cause permanent or temporary brain damage. Considering some of RFK’s, uh, unique perspective on things like vaccines and Wi-Fi, that sounds about right.
4. Trump’s Hannibal Lecter bit
Trump says some odd things at his rallies — check out the story about whether he’d rather be electrocuted or eaten by a shark — but one especially strange bit has risen to the top of the heap and even made an appearance at the Republican National Convention in July. While talking about immigration (and wrongly claiming that immigrants are coming to the U.S. after being released from mental institutions and insane asylums), Trump will ask the attendees if they’ve seen Silence of the Lambs, a 1991 horror film about a cannibal named Hannibal Lecter (see also: the TV show Hannibal.) Then, he will start talking about “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” and how “he would love to have you for dinner,” or something along those lines. There are lots of things that don’t make sense about this bit, which Rolling Stone says Trump’s been doing since June of last year. Like, does Trump think Hannibal Lecter is real? Why does he keep suggesting that Hannibal Lecter has passed away, when the real actor who portrayed him is still alive and the character from Silence of the Lambs canonically survived the film?
When Rolling Stone asked the Trump campaign why Trump keeps talking about Hannibal Lecter, campaign communications director Steven Cheung told them, “President Trump is an inspiring and gifted storyteller and referencing pop culture is one of many reasons why he can successfully connect with the audience and voters. Whereas, Kamala [Harris] is as relatable as a worn-out couch.” The publication suggests the bit might be due to several misunderstandings, including Trump potentially mistaking Hopkins for actor and Trump fan Jon Voight, and there’s some online speculation that Trump is confusing “insane asylum” with the “political asylum” granted to immigrants fleeing persecution in their home countries, but the connection is still not clear.
5. Biden and Trump argue about golf at the debate
The June 27 presidential debate between Biden and Trump may go down as one of the most consequential debates in history, with Biden’s incoherent, startling performance triggering enough concern among voters and Democratic Party leaders that the president ultimately dropped out of the race. The whole 90-minute experience is probably worth its own entry on this list, but one specific moment was particularly absurd: Biden and Trump getting into a spat over each other’s golf swings during an exchange about Biden’s age. These two were not beating the “too old” allegations.
6. Ear pads at the RNC
After Trump survived an attempted assassination on July 13, he showed up to the first night of the RNC two days later with what looked like a large piece of gauze over the part of his ear that was reportedly grazed by a bullet. In solidarity with their nearly fallen leader, other RNC attendees started wearing ear bandages. By the end of the convention, some in the crowd looked pretty silly.
7. JD Vance and the couch meme
JD Vance came right out the gate earning the internet’s ire and mockery, thanks to the one-two punch of a deeply cringy Diet Mountain Dew/racism joke he made at his first rally as Trump’s VP pick and the surfacing of old comments he made disparaging “childless cat ladies.” But the Vance meme with real staying power happens to be for something he (probably) didn’t even actually do. Shortly after he was announced as Trump’s pick, an anonymous X user posted a joke about Vance admitting to having intimate relations with a couch in his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Thanks to an unintentional assist from the Associated Press, memes about JD Vance having sex with a couch went super viral, and ended up making their way onto the late night talk shows, a Kamala Harris fundraising email, and even Tim Walz’s first speech as a VP candidate.
8. RFK vs. the bear cub
Finally, we come to the most absurd moment of the election so far. In early August, RFK closed the book on a decade-long New York City mystery: a dead bear cub found in Central Park in 2014. In a video RFK posted on X on August 4 (with the caption, “Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker”), he told actor Roseanne Barr that he, in fact, had dumped the cub in the park after allegedly seeing a woman run over it with her car upstate. Per his story, RFK collected the roadkill so he could eat it, went falconing, drove the cub’s body to famed steakhouse Peter Luger in Brooklyn, and then, with time running short ahead of a planned plane trip, drove to Central Park in Manhattan, dumped the bear, and left a bicycle near the body to stage the whole thing as a cycling accident. The New Yorker then published a profile of RFK Jr that featured additional details about this anecdote, including a shocking photo of the presidential candidate hamming it up with the bear’s carcass. Not sure what “spin” he expected from this one. At least now we have some possible explanations for that brain worm — could be the bear, could be his freezer full of roadkill.
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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