Kamala Harris Has Brought the Joy
Why Republicans are so freaked out about a woman who laughs.
“I call her laughing Kamala,” Donald Trump recently said about his new opponent. “You ever watch her laugh? She’s crazy. You know, you can tell a lot by a laugh — she’s crazy, she’s nuts.”
He’s right about one thing: You can indeed tell a lot by a laugh. And you can also tell a lot by how people react to a laugh. Perhaps Trump will choose “Laughing Kamala” as his go-to nickname for Vice President Harris, to follow on “Crooked Hillary” and “Sleepy Joe.” I can’t help but hope so, because Harris’ laugh clearly fills conservatives with fear; to paraphrase Margaret Atwood, men are afraid that women will laugh at them, while women are afraid men will kill them.
Harris laughs easily, boisterously, and frequently. It’s one of the most appealing things about her personality, and something you don’t see often in politicians. And Trump? Not only does he almost never laugh himself, he is positively obsessed with the idea that other people may be laughing at him. Which makes Harris’s laughter all the more delicious. This is just one element of the emotional transformation Democrats have undergone since last weekend: After a Biden campaign that felt like a grim march toward doom, Kamala Harris is bringing some joy to the presidential race.
The Harris campaign has now put up its first ad:
This ad is full of energy, smiles, and laughter, set to Beyoncé’s propulsive “Freedom.” Not only is Harris laughing, other people are laughing too. If Trump watched this ad, he’d start to sweat.
Trump’s terror of being laughed at
From the moment he began running for president, Trump couldn’t stop talking about how America was supposedly being laughed at. China was laughing at us, he’d say, Europe is laughing at us, the world is laughing at us, everyone’s laughing at us. In January 2016 the Washington Post counted over 100 times Trump said America was being laughed at. But if he were elected, the laughter would stop. “We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won’t be,” he said.
You don’t have to be a trained psychologist to see that this is driven by a deep insecurity, yet the irony is that when he became president, there was probably not a single person on earth laughed at more often than Donald Trump. And not just the kind of mockery any leader gets, but laughter unique to him. In a 2018 speech at the United Nations, “Trump boasted that his administration had accomplished more over two years than ‘almost any administration’ in American history, eliciting audible guffaws in the cavernous chamber hall.” At a NATO summit the next year, video emerged of Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, and Boris Johnson mocking Trump at a reception, the cool kids laughing about that loser they’ll never accept into their clique. That must have hurt.
Yet unlike others who worry about being laughed at, Trump dances right up to the edge of his fear. He has always been a camp figure, walking the line of self-parody. He built his brand on a child’s idea of what a rich person is like, with his ridiculous hair, his ill-fitting suits and comically long ties, his succession of wives discarded as soon as they reach middle age, his innumerable cheesy two-bit grifts, and his garish penthouse apartment gilded in gold leaf, a stunning monument to bad taste. All of it invites rather than avoids mockery. As a politician, he uses humor more than any other candidate in memory. He’s a combination of George Wallace and Don Rickles.
Camp is meant to be funny, and Trump enacts a camp performance his supporters are invited to join in, complete with absurdly inappropriate soundtrack (“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” plays at every rally) and the same tired jokes repeated over and over. Trump rallies wind up being something like those meta-horror films such as “Scream” and “The Cabin in the Woods,” simultaneously frightening and a self-aware parody of the genre. When he hugs and kisses a flag,1 it’s supposed to be funny; the crowd is both applauding his alleged patriotism and laughing at what a weird spectacle he’s making of himself. Being a Trump cultist is supposed to be fun, and for them, it is.
But while Trump makes lots of jokes, he never laughs. Think about it: Can you remember ever seeing him really laugh? His joy comes from soaking up adulation, settling scores, humiliating his enemies, and being cruel to the powerless. None of it is about the kind of individual connection we experience when we laugh with others on an equal footing.
Why Harris’s laugh frightens them
Like many politicians, Harris can be overly cautious. She has had moments in interviews when her apparent fear of saying something problematic has led her into the quicksand of banality. Nevertheless, Laughing Kamala has always been there — unrestrained, unselfconscious, willing to laugh like no one’s watching.
Republicans have been talking for years about how uncomfortable they get when Harris laughs; Ben Shapiro calls it “that insane Joker laugh,” while Newt Gingrich once called it “distinctively jarring.” But the truth is that while there are people with weird or unsettling laughs, Harris is not among them. Her laugh doesn’t sound strange or go into odd registers; if you heard a regular person laugh the way she does you wouldn’t find it unusual in any way.
No, what freaks conservatives out about Harris’ laugh is that it’s real. When she laughs she’s not enacting a performance of mirth; her laugh is genuine. What they really mean when they complain about it is How dare she! A woman? Thinking she has the right to just laugh whenever she wants to? What is the world coming to?
A woman who laughs is letting go, experiencing pleasure; at least for a moment, she’s not concerned about pleasing or catering to or worrying about men. When you laugh you’re momentarily not in control; you might even reveal some part of yourself. This is what Trump and others on the right hate about Harris’s laugh: She thinks she has the right to laugh whether they like it or not, and not behind her hand with a little “tee-hee-hee” but with real joy. That makes her “crazy,” as Trump says; a woman who laughs must be a lunatic, or maybe a witch with terrifying powers.
Just a week ago, Republicans concluded an absolutely rapturous convention, full of ecstatic celebration at the prospect of what they felt confident would be a smashing victory come November. Today they are distressed and deflated, and Democrats are the ones laughing. That doesn’t tell us who’s going to win in November, but for the moment, it’s nice to see.
So if you’re looking for a pick-me-up before the ugliness comes rushing back in, here you go:
That’s why it felt so vulgar when, during Trump’s convention speech, they brought out on stage the fireman’s gear belonging to the man who was killed at the Trump rally by a bullet intended for him, and Trump walked over and kissed the helmet while the crowd cheered. By mimicking the campy flag-kissing routine, Trump turned the man’s death into nothing more than another comedic bit in his act.
Outstanding in many respects, including the research culled and the infectious joy from KH laughter. Yes, white male Rs cannot deal with, in any reasonable way, an accomplished Black woman "who does not know her place". Thank you for this.
The last time Trump actually laughed was when he was in third grade and he pushed the chubby kid into a dumpster. He's a classic bully, zero sense of humor, overwhelming paranoia, skin so thin you can see thru it. And as for the firefighter's gear - as a 30 year volunteer firefighter there is no way that was the murder victim's real turnout gear, it looked brand new off the rack, never worn to a scene.