NASCAR star compared to Trump, tells nasty fans to quit 'b----in,' while race wife dusts off her Daisy Dukes

Kyle Larson flew from Richmond to Knoxville, Iowa, won the biggest sprint car race in the country, and got called Trump-esque for telling his critics to quit whining. That's the whole story, and honestly, it's a good one. The guy chartered a plane, raced twice in one night on two different surfaces in two different states, and still had energy left to tell haters where to stick it. That's not a political statement. That's just a man who's tired of people who've never sat in a car at 140 miles an hour telling him how to drive one.

But of course somebody had to make it about Trump, because that's where our culture goes now whenever a successful person refuses to grovel. Larson didn't apologize for winning. He didn't thank his critics for their "valid concerns." He told them to knock off the bellyaching, which is exactly what you'd expect from someone who just pulled off a logistical and athletic feat most drivers wouldn't attempt. Somehow that's newsworthy enough to get compared to a former president, as if confidence and a low tolerance for whining were rare enough to require a celebrity analogy.

Then there's the other half of this story, his wife dusting off the Daisy Dukes for the occasion, which apparently also needed to be mentioned like it was scandalous. It wasn't. It was a NASCAR wife dressed for a NASCAR event in Iowa in August. The fact that outlets feel obligated to frame ordinary confidence, whether it's a driver's attitude or his wife's outfit, as some kind of statement says more about the people writing the headlines than the people living the story.