Kamala Harris’s Laugh Is a Campaign Issue. Our Comedy Critic Weighs in.

Kamala Harris has an easy laugh. To the campaign running against her, this appears to be a vulnerability to exploit.

Donald J. Trump jumped on it when unveiling a nickname for her on Saturday: “Laffin’ Kamala Harris,” adding that “You can tell a lot by a laugh.” Compilations of her guffawing circulated online this week. Opposition research from the National Republican Senatorial Committee included her “inappropriate laughter” under the subject heading: Weird.

The first thing to be said about this is simply: LOL.

Far from a liability, her laugh is one of her most effective weapons.

Only in an era when everything gets politicized would a campaign come out aggressively against boisterous laughter. What next? Running against puppies and ice cream? Laughter transcends party politics, and it’s helped the messaging of everyone from Ronald Reagan to John F. Kennedy. And yet, in his bluntly insinuating style, Trump is tapping into something, that the traditional image of leadership is more of a stoic face than a happy convulsion.

We’ve been here before, the last time a woman led a presidential ticket. Hillary Clinton’s laugh was criticized, and also called weird. There was a suggestion that it made her seem inauthentic, which was a bizarre point, since genuine laughter is, if not involuntary, then very hard to fake. Lenny Bruce once dared a crowd to try it four times in an hour.

Calling women overly emotional or hysterical is a sexist trope, and there’s a long history of positioning laughter in opposition to reason. Plato warned against a love of laughter, suggesting it indicates a loss of control. Ever alert to the theater of power, Trump rarely laughs, dating back to long before he was in politics. Recounting his season appearing on “The Apprentice,” the magician Penn Jillette marveled at how he would regularly spend hours watching Trump talk and never notice the slightest chuckle.