Why has Kamala Harris’ laugh become a subject of debate in US election?

Ever since President Joe Biden dropped out of his re-election campaign, Kamala Harris has gone from strength to strength.

The Vice-President, now officially the Democrats’ nominee in November, has raised hundreds of millions in dollars, seen record size crowds at her rallies, pumped up the base with her running mate Tim Walz and overtaken Donald Trump in the polls.

Trump, meanwhile, is hitting back – by attacking Kamala Harris for laughing.

Let’s take a look at how Harris’ laugh has become a topic in the US elections:

What happened?

Trump and the Republicans are trying to find an angle of attack on Kamala that they can use.

“I call her ‘Laughing Kamala,’” Trump said at a rally in Michigan last month.

“Have you ever watched her laugh? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. … She is nuts.”

Trump is trying to take a page out of his old playbook – trying to humiliate an opponent by bestowing on him or her a derogatory nickname.

The former president has labelled his opponents including ‘Sleepy’ Joe Biden, ‘Crooked’ Hillary, ‘Crazy’ Nancy Pelosi and ‘Lying’ Ted Cruz, Ron ‘DeSanctimonious’, ‘Birdbrain’ Nikki Haley and ‘Crying’ Chuck – just to name a few.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee tried to drive Trump’s message home.

NBC News quoted a memo it released urging its representatives to respond to the Democrats’ assertions that Trump and Vance are weird by highlighting, “Kamala Harris has a habit of laughing at inappropriate moments.”

Meanwhile, Fox News host Sean Hannity broadcast a supercut of Harris laughing to explain why voters ‘detest her.’

This isn’t even the first time they’ve tried this line of attack.

As per The Independent, Trump at a Pennsylvania rally in October 2020 aid, “Is there something wrong with her? She kept laughing at, you know, very serious questions.”

In 2021, The New York Post and Mail Online said Harris laughed nervously when asked about the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In 2022, Harris also took flak from Republicans for laughing during a press conference on the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian-American GOP state legislator Victoria Spartz slammed Harris, saying it is “a very serious situation” and “not a laughing matter.”

According to The Independent, people have been taking note of Harris’ distinctive laugh for years.

Mark Buell, a San Fransisco real estate maven and Democratic donor, was one of Harris’ earliest backers.

He told The Independent, “[Harris] is very funny. She has a very good sense of humor, and when she enjoys herself, she has a very hearty laugh.”

However, he said Harris’ laugh “became more prominent” when she was nervous and that it would “show up sometimes at inappropriate times.”

Harris addressed her laugh on the Drew Barrymore Show in May.

“People love to talk about the way I laugh,” Harris said as per NBC News. “I have my mother’s laugh. I grew up with a bunch of women in particular who laughed from the belly … I think it’s really important to remind each other and our younger ones: Don’t be confined to other people’s perception about what this looks like or how you should act in order to be.”

What do experts think?

Experts say women, particularly those in power, are harshly judged when it comes to displaying any kind of emotion.

“It’s been taboo for women to speak too loud, to laugh too loud, to laugh too much,” Kathleen Karlyn, a scholar of cinema and media studies, told The Washington Post. “It’s predictable that, when Kamala laughs, she’s asserting her power and her refusal to be silent or play by these old rules about proper femininity.”

Hillary Clinton was similarly mocked for her ‘cackle’ in her 2007 campaign – which some derided as ‘calculated.’

“You guys keep telling me, lighten up, be fun,” Clinton told reporters in January 2007, as per newspaper. “Now I get a little funny, and I’m being psychoanalyzed.”

Others argue that such attacks on Harris are misogynistic and racist.

“It’s how women have been sullied — how women have been demeaned as leaders in our society,” veteran Democratic strategist Donna Brazile added.

As Duchess Harris, a professor of American studies, Macalester College, wrote in The Conversation, “I know that Black women in the US have a history of struggle against violence and oppression. And too often when we experience joy, and show it, ridicule follows. We are said to be too loud, too emotional – well, too ‘Black women’.”

Harris argued that this argument goes back to an age old trope in US culture where Black women are labelled ‘loose’, ball-breakers or mother figures.

“Those labels clearly don’t fit Harris, so Trump has created a new epithet: ‘crazy laughing.’ As I see it, Black women deserve for some of that visibility to be joyful. In this realm, Harris is paving the way.”

Another piece in The Conversation argued that Trump and his team are trying to link wisdom and authority with gravitas.

The piece quoted  French poet Charles Baudelaire in his 1855 essay The Essence of Laughter as writing “the wise man never laughs but he trembles.”

He added that wise people are wary of laughing because they think there is a “secret contradiction” between wisdom and laughter. After all, wrote Baudelaire, Jesus Christ never laughed.

But the piece argued that Trump and his team have made a major mistake.

“Indeed, there is a very real risk now that Trump’s laughter-free demeanour will play against him, positioning him no longer as authoritative but as risible,” the piece noted.

Indeed, Mary L Trump, his niece and critic, told Slate in 2020 that he rarely if ever laughs.

“Laughing is to make yourself vulnerable, it’s to let down your guard in some way, it’s to lose a little bit of control,” Mary said.

Progressives, meanwhile, have welcomed Harris’ quirk.

“It’s like she’s surprised at the laugh,” comedian Allison Reese told The Washington Post. “It feels more uninhibited… the laugh is truly coming from this place of inner joy.”

Some think the attacks simply won’t work this time.

Kate Manne, a philosopher at Cornell University, tol_d Washington Post_ “voters are savvier this time around” compared to when Clinton ran in 2007 and 2016.

“We’ve seen misogyny, racism, but we’re also seeing people being smarter than they were in 2016,” Manne added.

Buell told The Independent that he doesn’t think this attack will land – mainly because of Trump himself.

“If you look at who she’s running against – a man who has no sense of humor – it’s a contrast,” said Buell. “The root of narcissism is massive insecurity… narcissists are always trying to create an image of themselves. [That’s why] he’s always denigrating other people and building up himself.”

The Trump campaign has defended itself.

Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung told NBC News, “President Trump is a truth-teller, and there is nothing more unifying than telling the truth about a weak, failed, incompetent, and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris and her destructive policies.”

With inputs from agencies