Kamala Harris Fires Back at Critics Who Mock Her Laugh: 'Nothing You Can Do to Me That Will Take My Joy'

Former Vice President Kamala Harris said the people who mock her laugh will never take away her joy. “There is nothing you can do to me that will take my joy; you are not that powerful,” she said on Keke Palmer’s podcast “Baby, This Is Keke Palmer” in an episode released on Tuesday, October 13.

At the beginning of the episode, Palmer recalled first interviewing Harris in 2023 before noting that Harris has since been campaigning for Democratic candidates as they head into the midterm elections.

Palmer asked Harris how she balances “who Madame VP gets to be as a human and who she has to show up as.”

“It can be difficult. It can be very difficult, Keke. I’m aware of the, whatever the memes are about my laugh,” she said.

Harris, 61, said she knows what her critics are trying to do. “Those who try to take your joy are trying to make you weak, and that’s where my fight comes in,” Harris told Palmer. “I know what you’re trying to do; you’re not going to take my joy.”

She explained that she “was raised in a family that included very powerful women, who laughed from their bellies,” adding, “And that’s how I laugh,” during the interview.

Harris was largely raised by her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a b----- cancer researcher who died in 2009. Harris often credits her mother with shaping her, and she frequently quotes her mother’s line, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”

President Donald Trump, then a candidate, frequently mocked Harris’ laugh during the 2024 presidential election. At a rally in Michigan in July 2024, he said, “I call her ‘laughing Kamala.’”

He later told a crowd at a rally in Pennsylvania, “Have you heard her laugh? That is the laugh of a crazy person,” according to a report.

Harris’ supporters embraced her laugh during her 2024 campaign. “You know that laugh. I love that laugh. Kamala is a joyful warrior,” her husband, Doug Emhoff, said at the Democratic National Convention. Former First Lady Michelle Obama also praised “the joy of her laughter and her light” in her convention speech, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose laugh was called a “cackle” when she ran for president, said Trump was “mocking her name and her laugh.”

During the same interview, Harris said she’s still undecided about running for president again in 2028, adding that it won’t matter much unless the Democratic Party makes big gains in the midterm elections on Tuesday, November 3, TMZ reported. She also said what she “had not anticipated was the capitulation” of powerful people during Trump’s second term, and she told Palmer she has “come to realize that there are some people, and in particular among some of the most powerful, who are purely transactional.”

Harris also criticized the Trump administration’s decision last month to deny White House press credentials to reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico. Harris told Palmer that if a president wants to exclude the press, then “you’re in the wrong place.”

A federal judge subsequently issued a temporary restraining order restoring the reporters’ White House press credentials for 14 days, according to a report.