The Oldest-Ever Presidential Candidate Is Trying to Attack Kamala Harris for Laughing

On Sunday afternoon, the news hit like a falling coconut to the head: President Joe Biden announced he was suspending his bid for president. Minutes later, followed by large swaths of the Democratic establishment, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to top the ticket. With Harris as the presumptive nominee, everything’s changed for the Trump-Vance campaign—their go-to strategy of attacking 81-year-old Biden’s presidential fitness and, err, aliveness is no longer on the table. Now, just a few months out from election day, they’re being forced to pivot to attacking Harris. And it’s not going well for them so far. 

Hours before Biden’s announcement, as the walls seemed to be closing in on the president’s candidacy, Trump tested the waters by attacking Harris: “Kamala, I call her laughing Kamala,” he said at a Michigan rally on Saturday night. “Have you ever watched her laugh? She’s crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She’s nuts. She is not as crazy as Nancy Pelosi.” On Sunday, when Harris emerged as Democrats’ likely nominee, right-wing influencers like Libs of TikTok shared a supercut of Harris laughing and a clip of her stating her pronouns. Fox News’ Sean Hannity similarly went after Harris for her penchant for joyful outbursts. Oh no—not a president who laughs! Anything but that!

Additionally, popular right-wing influencers are now pushing the sexist and misogynistic nonsense that Harris should be disqualified because she’s an adult woman who doesn’t have biological children. (Harris, through her marriage to Doug Emhoff, is a stepmother.) Other desperate right-wing hacks like Milo Yiannopoulos (who is, A. British, and B. has literally endorsed pedophilia) have also tried to weaponize rumors about Harris’ dating history against her, as if Trump hasn’t famously cheated on all of his wives, including allegedly with an adult film star while Melania Trump was pregnant.

So they’re going with “Kamala Harris is a childless slut” when their candidate has five children with three different women, cheated on his first wife with the second, cheated on the third with a Playboy model when the wife was pregnant & a porn star when she was postpartum, ok. https://t.co/Ur1S1I3FMh

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) July 22, 2024

The official Trump campaign Twitter account has also shared videos of Harris repeating her famous, increasingly beloved line calling on us to be “unburdened by what has been.” Reports surfaced that Trump wouldn’t agree to debate Harris, planning to write her off as an illegitimate candidate (?). And by 6 a.m. on Monday morning, Trump was busy posting away on Truth Social about how cheated and wronged Biden was, claiming the Democratic Party had stolen “the race from Biden after he won it in the primaries.” In a subsequent post, he switched back to mocking Biden: “It’s a new day and Joe Biden doesn’t remember quitting the race yesterday!” 

Oh he’s got nothing. https://t.co/0k0QREquu2

— Nolan 🌹 (@VoidOfRoses) July 20, 2024

Of course, this line of attack—that Harris isn’t a “legitimate candidate”—is entirely nonsensical. Biden wasn’t officially nominated before stepping down. As it stands, with Biden suspending his candidacy, Democrats are set to “undertake a transparent and orderly process” to nominate a replacement, DNC chairman Jaime Harrison said on Sunday. The delegates Biden earned during the primaries throughout this year are non-transferrable, meaning Harris will have to win her own. And Harris is absolutely on track to do so. The vice president vowed to “earn” the nomination and, as of Monday morning, she’s already accumulated over 500 of the 1,986 delegates needed to secure it. Biden’s campaign has coalesced around Harris, and the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue shattered records once Harris emerged as the presumptive nominee, raising close to $70 million in a single day on Sunday, breaking a previous record from 2020.

While Harris could still face primary challengers, as of Monday morning, every possible, viable challenger—namely Midwestern governors like Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, Michigan’s Gretchen Witmer, and North Carolina’s Roy Cooper—has endorsed her. It’s doubtful that any Democratic politician with presidential aspirations will sabotage their future campaign and go against the establishment by challenging Harris right now.

The Democratic National Convention takes place next month from August 19 to 22. Between now and then, the DNC could host a virtual vote to secure a nominee prior to the convention—or, the convention next month could be an open convention, where candidates enter their names and try to secure the most delegates to win the nomination on the spot. 

Absolutely record shattering fundraising for @KamalaHarris — the most dollars ever in a single day to pass through ActBlue. pic.twitter.com/4a6NOUOOOh

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) July 22, 2024

In any case, Harris is now the likely Democratic nominee. It’s stellar timing for Democrats that Biden stepped down right after the Republican National Convention wrapped last week: Republicans spent the entire convention attacking a man who’s no longer running for president. Any attention and momentum the GOP built coming into this week is gone.

Harris lacks most of Biden’s key vulnerabilities, like age and ineffectualness: She’s young—decades younger than Trump. She’s proven to be an expert, highly effective communicator on reproductive rights, which is the Democratic Party’s biggest strength and Trump’s biggest weakness. She has some amount of distance from Biden’s disastrous, widely unpopular policy decisions on Gaza. And while progressives may not be thrilled by her record as a prosecutor, it’s a sharp, effective foil to Trump being convicted of 34 felony charges. As Sunday’s ActBlue donations show, she can effectively rally and energize the Democratic base. But perhaps most importantly, she isn’t Biden.

Still, the next several months are likely to be an uphill battle leading up to election day, with Trump’s poll numbers holding strong and the Democratic Party coming out of weeks of chaos and infighting. But if all Trump and Republicans have on Harris is laughter and mirth, well, good luck to them!