WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump, while keeping a virtually nonexistent campaign schedule this week, has instead come up with a mystifying new slur for his presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris: Kamabla.
The insult seems to have made its first appearance Monday evening in a pair of posts on his social media platform attacking Harris and President Joe Biden over high grocery and energy prices.
“Kamabla Harris is afraid to Debate me on FoxNews. She will be easier to defeat on the Debate Stage than Crooked Joe Biden, just watch!,” Trump wrote just after midnight Tuesday, and then followed it hours later with an unhinged-sounding post that also attacked his favorite Democratic targets.
“What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s top two campaign aides, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, did not respond to HuffPost queries about the new insult. The two were hired to give the coup-attempting, convicted criminal former president a more focused, more professional operation than he had in either 2016 or 2020.
Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesperson, responded to HuffPost’s original question and each follow-up with a single word, the same, misspelled version of the vice president’s first name: “Kamabla.”
It’s unclear what the insult is supposed to mean, although Trump has of late focused on racist disparagement of Harris, so the misspelling may be an attempt to make the Oakland, California, native seem more foreign.
Alex Brandon/Associated Press
“Trump can’t wrap his head around how to attack Kamala Harris so he’s leaned into his greatest hits: insults, name calling, misogyny and racism. She’s truly confounded him,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, who worked for Trump as White House communications director.
“Convicted felon Donald Trump is spiraling and scrambling because he clearly has no idea how to run against a former prosecutor,” said Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika.
Also unclear is why Trump, who complained on a near-daily basis in May during his Manhattan hush money trial about not being able to campaign in the various key states because of his criminal court schedule, is now choosing to barely campaign at all. His only public event this week appears to be a Friday visit to Montana, which is not expected to be a swing state in November, to appear with the Republican Senate candidate.
“It’s bizarre,” Farah Griffin said. “It truly feels like Trump is phoning in this election. The nicknames are lazy and ineffective, and this week he isn’t traveling to a single battleground state.”
Trump’s history of racism goes back decades, starting with a Department of Justice probe into the real estate business he ran with his father over its refusal to rent apartments to Black applicants. The investigation was settled in 1975 after Trump and his father, Fred Trump, agreed to rent to Black tenants using the Urban League as a go-between.
In 1989, Trump bought full-page newspapers ads calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino youths accused of raping a jogger in New York City. Trump continued those calls even after the five men were exonerated.
In 2011, Trump was the highest-profile spreader of the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama, the first Black president, was not born in the United States. He even lied that he had sent a team of private investigators to Hawaii, where Obama was born, and that “they cannot believe what they are finding.”
During Trump’s 2016 campaign for president, he claimed that most of those crossing into the United States illegally at the southern border were “rapists” and “drug dealers.” As president, he told aides that he wanted to keep out immigrants from “shithole” countries, referring to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations.
And most recently, during an appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference, he claimed Harris “became Black” recently, after years of claiming South Asian heritage. In fact, Harris has always claimed ancestry from both India and Jamaica.
“Trump’s insults are always offensive. In the case of Kamala Harris, his racism and misogyny are out of control. In fact, since Harris has become the nominee, his racism and misogyny have become primary message points,” said Jennifer Horn, a former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party.
Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said spending energy on what precisely Trump’s new insult meant was a waste of time and a disservice to Americans ahead of the November election.
“It’s BS. It means nothing. He knows what he’s doing, and the press is always trying to make it more than it is,” Steele said. “He’s a disrespectful, insecure 78-year-old man acting like a petulant 10-year-old bully.”
