Not without reason are election years dubbed “the silly season.” Some partisans will say anything to influence voters. Put another way, they throw spaghetti at a wall to determine what sticks. Here’s a case of spaghetti gone astray.
Dustin Grage, author of the tweet below, works for the Minnesota GOP as a strategist. He claims that Tim Walz having his picture taken with two different dogs is a “problem.” It’s unclear exactly where Grage is going with this, although he seems to be implying Walz somehow is dishonest.
Elon Musk, owner of “X”, is a Trump supporter, but he allows readers to “add context.” In this case, a reader did, as follows:
“The dog is [sic] the second photo is one Tim Walz met while taking Scout (from the first photo) to the dog park. Fuller video from that moment available on Tim Walz’s Instagram: instagram.com/timwalz/reel/C…
If you click on the instagram link, you’ll get a video showing these two dogs playing with each other. Who would guess a well-known politician taking visiting a dog park might have his picture taken with another dog? Not Dustin Grage in a million years.
I’ll allow that Grage might not be as dumb as this makes him look. He may have gone hunting for a dog story because there have been so many dog stories this year.
- J. D. Vance, Walz’s GOP counterpart, was mocked for taking his dog to the convention (see story here), and has been accused of “dog whistle” rhetoric, e.g. “childless cat ladies” (see story here).
- Kristi Noem was knocked out of the running for a place on Trump’s ticket when she boasted of shooting her dog (see story here).
- And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had to defend himself against accusations he ate a dog (Snopes is satisfied he didn’t; read their fact-check here).
Maybe Republicans should let sleeping dogs lie, lest they become the butt of jokes their party is going to the dogs.