Trump is still trying to make Harris’s laugh a problem. People who know her well explain why

Long before Kamala Harris was running to be president of the United States, Mark Buell noticed that she had a certain anxious tic.

"[Harris] is very funny. She has a very good sense of humor, and when she enjoys herself, she has a very hearty laugh," recalls the San Francisco real estate developer and Democratic donor, who was one of Harris’s earliest political patrons, in an interview with The Independent.

But back then, he says, when she was nervous “that laugh became more prominent… so between the two, it would show up sometimes at inappropriate times”.

Two decades later, Donald Trump and other conservatives are trying to use Harris’s distinctive and frequent peals of whole-body laughter as an attack line, with the former president even adding “Laughing Kamala” to his notorious roster of nicknames.

“You ever watch her laugh? [...] You can tell a lot by a laugh. She’s crazy. She’s nuts,” said Trump at a rally in Michigan last month.

According to Buell, that is no coincidence. He believes that someone tipped Trump or his team off about Harris’s old habit, and – «in keeping with Trump’s approach to politics, looking for weaknesses and faults in people» – he went after it.

Yet old friends and allies claim that Harris’s sense of humour is one of her most appealing characteristics, and a sign of her genuine willingness to connect with other people emotionally.

Indeed, on TikTok Harris’s laughter has become one of the most-memed sounds of the 2024 election, endlessly and affectionately remixed by superfans, comedians, and dance musicians.

“I don’t know that I have any memory of, quote, ‘the laugh’, which Republicans have used as a weapon against her since she became VP,” says Mark Leno, a former California state legislator