From vice presidential running mates to dead bears, it’s been a chaotic week in American politics.
The week began with independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in an attempt to get ahead of a New Yorker story, admitting he took a bear carcass from the side of the road and placed it in Central Park as a prank a decade ago.
“I didn’t want to leave the bear in the car,” he said to Roseanne Barr. “That would have been bad.”
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday ended her search for a running mate, tabbing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for the role. He soon went on the attack against his Republican counterpart, JD Vance, roasting him over a fake narrative that the Ohio senator had sexual relations with a couch, which resulted in many jokes online.
“I can’t wait to debate the guy,” Walz said at his introduction rally with Harris. “If he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
Republicans celebrated the pick — ”I could not be more thrilled,” Donald Trump reacted — and attacked Walz as too liberal and argued he abandoned his Army National Guard unit just before it was deployed to Iraq in 2005.
“What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage,” Vance said Wednesday.
And Trump on Thursday made an odd year in politics even stranger and troubling, when he said these two lines at a Mar-a-Lago news conference:
“I could have done things to [Hillary Clinton] that would have made your head spin,” he said, when Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked whether he would pardon Hunter Biden if he returns to the Oval Office.
“Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump said, claiming the size of his crowd on January 6th was comparable to the crowd at MLK's “I Have a Dream” speech.
