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It’s funny, really. In an election where the two leading presidential candidates are miles apart on weighty issues from abortion rights to border policy, for some reason both sides are talking about how Vice President Kamala Harris laughs and former President Donald Trump doesn’t.
Trump, trying out new material to mock Harris, has dubbed his opponent as “Laffin’ Kamala.”
“She’s crazy. She’s nuts,” he said at a recent rally in Michigan, implying there is something maniacal about her laugh.
His supporters might hear a funny joke, but hers hear a sexist attack in line with the resurfaced comments of JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, who described childless Democrats in a 2021 interview as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”
If you don’t hear any sexism in any of this, consider that Trump also mocked Hillary Clinton for her laughter.
Democrats, meanwhile, are trying a new tactic to deal with Trump’s most outrageous claims – laughing at them to take their power away.
Allies of Harris are shifting gears to emphasize not the danger they think Trump poses to the country but instead how “weird” he sounds when he makes outlandish claims.
“Listen to the guy,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” of Trump. “He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter, and shocking sharks, and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind. And I thought we just give him way too much credit.”
Calling Trump and Vance “weird” helps “ratchet down some of the scariness,” Walz, a potential vice presidential pick, said. He went on to add that Trump is rarely seen laughing.
“If he has laughed, it’s at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior. And I don’t think you call it anything else. It’s simply what we’re observing,” Walz said.
It is certainly true that Trump rarely laughs. CNN’s Gregory Krieg wrote about it in 2016. The magician/comedian Penn Jillette, who spent time with Trump during “The Apprentice” years, has talked about how Trump does not laugh. And so has former FBI Director James Comey, who Trump controversially fired back in 2017.
While Trump himself rarely laughs, his supporters often dismiss his more controversial statements as jokes.
For instance, look at when he told a gathering of conservative Christians on Friday that if they vote for him in November, they won’t have to vote again in four years because “it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine.” What’ll be fixed? The next election? Division in the country? We don’t know.
Trump urges Christians to vote: ‘You won’t have to do it again’
Tapper asked Sen. Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican, how he interpreted Trump’s baffling remark.
“I think he’s obviously making a joke,” Cotton said.
That’s a recurring theme among Trump supporters – that outrageous claims are clearly jokes. No, Trump doesn’t really want to be “dictator” for a day, it’s just a joke he said with a straight face, they’ll argue, adding that people who don’t get the jokes need to stop taking things so seriously.
Jokes don’t require laughter, obviously, but laughter certainly helps people know when you’re joking.
Trump’s niece Mary, who is no fan of her uncle, has said Trump gets his intentionally straight face from his father, her grandfather, who “also didn’t laugh.”
“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 Trump told Virginia Heffernan of Slate in 2020. “And that can’t happen. That is not allowed to happen.”
While Democrats are using Trump’s lack of laughing as evidence of his larger “weirdness,” Republicans hope that sharing clips of Harris belly laughing will make her seem “weird” to the people who don’t yet have much of an impression of her. It’s a tactic that so far seems to have backfired, since Harris supporters also like to share clips of her laughing.
She’ll laugh at herself in the midst of a speech, like the viral “coconut tree” moment that has gotten so much attention. She’ll laugh in the midst of a press conference or during a “60 Minutes” interview – otherwise serious moments when another politician might try to keep a straight face throughout.
Harris likes to bring up the subject of her laughter, as she did with Drew Barrymore a few months ago.
“Apparently some people love to talk about the way I laugh,” Harris said.
“I have my mother’s laugh. And I grew up around a bunch of women in particular, who laughed from the belly. … They would sit around the kitchen and drinking their coffee, telling big stories with big laughs.”
Harris said she’s not going to tone down her laughter because it’s important to remind each other and teach younger people a lesson.
“Don’t be confined to other people’s perception about what this looks like, and how you should act in order to be,” she said.
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