Donald Trump’s nickname game is nothing like it once was. Back in 2016, he cut through a crowded GOP primary field with idiotic-yet-effective classics like “Low-Energy Jeb,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Liddle Marco.” But his more recent insults have either been lazy (“Sleepy Joe“) or confusing (Letitia “Peekaboo” James).
After trying out a few Kamala Harris insults that fall into the former category (“Laffin Kamala” and “Lyin’ Kamala”), this week Trump launched another head-scratcher: “Kamabla.”
The moniker first appeared on Monday night in this pair of Truth Social posts:
He used “Kamabla” or “Crazy Kamabla” in seven more posts over the next two days. At one point, Trump explained why he’s calling Harris “crazy” — because she “is, indeed, CRAZY” — but he did not elaborate on the part of the new moniker that’s actually confusing:
Trump surrogate Doug Burgum dodged when asked about the nickname during a CNN interview, and Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, wasn’t any help either:
When asked for an explanation, the Trump campaign was similarly evasive. “Kamabla represents all the hurt and misery the Biden-Harris administration has brought to every single American,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told me via email.
So what does “Kamabla” actually mean? It seems no one knows for sure, but here are some of the leading theories.
It means “Kamala is blah” or goes “blah, blah, blah.”
One of the most popular guesses is that Trump is trying to work the word blah into Harris’s name. The likeliest pronunciation of the nickname is “Kama-blah,” but Trump has yet to say it out loud, so we don’t really know. (In a lengthy Fox & Friends appearance on Wednesday morning, Trump only referred to Harris as “her” or “she.”)
But if this is what Trump meant, why didn’t he spell it “Kamablah”? Which definition of blah is he using: “dull” or “silly or pretentious chatter or nonsense”? Both? It’s still very confusing.
It’s a mash-up of “Kamala” and “Obama.”
Deep down, Trump wishes he were running against his original political nemesis, Barack Obama. Earlier in the 2024 campaign, Trump floated a conspiracy theory that claimed the two-term former president was actively running the Biden administration, and he’s publicly said “Obama” when he meant “Biden” at least seven times. It’s clear from this 2024 election fanfic Trump posted on Tuesday that he still has “Barrack HUSSEIN Obama” [sic] on the brain:
But if this is what Trump was aiming for, it’s weird that he went with “Kamabla,” since the two names combine into “Kobamala” so easily.
It’s a reference to the mob.
A co-worker posited this explanation: “If you mispronounce ‘Kamala’ as Trump does, then the B makes it sound like ‘mob’ is in the middle of her name.”
Intriguing theory, but how is “mob” an attack on Harris? Trump rolled out the name before Tim Walz was selected as her running mate, so it’s not about the 2020 riots in Minneapolis. Trump has been talking about the “Biden Crime Family” for months, but he’s yet to turn that attack on Harris. And why not spell it “Kamobla”?
It’s a deliberate misspelling meant to show dominance.
Trump called Ron DeSantis “Rob” for a while, so perhaps he’s just mangling Harris’s name to show he can’t be bothered to learn the correct spelling.
It’s a deliberate misspelling meant to be racist.
Trump spent years calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” and described his former Labor secretary, Elaine Chao, as Mitch McConnell’s “China-loving wife, Coco Chow.” So Trump simply being racist is always a good guess when it comes to inexplicable nicknames.
But how, exactly, is “Kamabla” racist? Again, no one is quite sure. Some think he’s trying to emphasize her Indian heritage, while others believe he’s working the word Black into her name.
It’s also possible that Trump is trying to “other” Harris by suggesting she has a bizarre name that’s impossible to spell correctly. Trump did the same thing with Nikki Haley, the last woman of color he ran against. During the 2024 GOP primary, Trump kept pointing out that the former South Carolina governor was born “Nimarata Nikki Randhawa” to suggest she was hiding her true identity, though she has gone by her middle name since birth. Trump never spelled Haley’s first name correctly in these attacks, referring to her instead as “Nimrada” and “Nimbra.”
It’s just a typo that Trump is running with.
Maybe we’re all overthinking this. It’s possible Trump accidentally typed “Kamabla” in his first Truth Social post, then repeated it seven more times to cover up his error.
Perhaps we’ll never know what “Kamabla” really means. We never got a satisfying explanation for “covfefe” either.
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