When Gretchen Whitmer ran for Michigan governor in 2018, a debate coach advised her to draw a smiley face at the top of her notes, so that at the podium she’d remember not to frown. Instead, she jotted down a reference to a raunchy joke about a menstruating woman and her horny boyfriend—the punch line ends with “Shark Week”—because it reliably made her laugh. “If you can turn off the volume and just watch and see who looks like they’re having the most fun,” she explained, “they’re almost always the one who wins.” She got a shark tattoo on her shoulder as a permanent reminder “to keep a sense of humor and to be a happy warrior.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has been following that advice. Her high-wattage beams and peals of laughter, her sartorial mash-ups of Chuck Taylors and pearls, and her campaign’s convention theme of “joy” all telegraph a happy-warrior candidacy. “I have my mother’s laugh,” she said on The Drew Barrymore Show in April. “I grew up around a bunch of women in particular who laughed from the belly. They laughed!” And she has no plans to tone it down. “You know, I’m never going to be…” she said…and then laughed. “That’s just, I’m not that person.”
Laughter is not part of Donald Trump’s demeanor. Maybe he’s not good at it. The comedian-magician Penn Jillette, who was a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice, which Trump hosted, said the former president was “someone who has never laughed sincerely and never made a joke.” Trump would laugh “in a bully way,” Jillette said. “‘Ha-ha, you look kinda fat, Joe!’ He’ll do that. But he won’t laugh at himself.”
Reddit forums have been devoted to the search for a single video of Trump genuinely laughing. This quest has uncovered the occasional smirk or snigger, but little suggesting joy or even amusement. At a 2019 campaign rally in Florida, Trump chortled—after an audience member yelled, “Shoot ’em!” in response to his musings on how to stop migrants from coming across the border. And he got off a laugh during a 2016 speech after a dog barked and he said, “What was that?”—and an audience member answered, “Hillary!” Pretty funny.
Side by side on the debate stage last month, Trump’s eternal frown and Harris’s frequent bemusement made for split-screen tragedy-and-comedy masks. No wonder her happiness makes him unhappy. “I call her Laffin’ Kamala,” Trump said. “You ever watch her laugh? She’s crazy.” As with all of Trump’s riffs, he’s got this one on auto-replay. “Have you heard her laugh? That is the laugh of a crazy person. That is the laugh of a crazy—the laugh of a lunatic.”
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