Known for his wealth and his exploits, Donald Trump is also known for his ability to ridicule his opponents. “Lyin’ Hillary” (“Hillary the liar”), “Crooked Joe”, “Crazy Nancy”… Since his first campaign for the supreme election in 2016, the real estate mogul has become a master in the art of finding nicknames for his rivals. The latest one was unsurprisingly attributed to the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, renamed by Donald Trump “Kamabla” on his Truth Social network.
On the evening of August 8, the 45th President of the United States published a first message with a mistake in the Vice President’s first name: “People are voting with their STOMACH, and food prices are now at an all-time high because of Kamabla/Biden’s INCOMPETENCE […]”. Ten minutes later, a second missive was released with the same typo, making it clear that Donald Trump had found a new nickname for his rival: “Kamabla has declared, on several occasions, that she wants to CANCEL THE POLICE […].”
But what does “Kamabla” mean?
Except that the billionaire’s latest find did not have the desired effect. Very quickly, Internet users and the press began to wonder about the meaning of this nickname. “Trump continues to call Harris ‘Kamabla’, but no one seems to understand its meaning”, is the headline in the British daily newspaper The Independent. Asked by the American newspaper The Intelligencer, Donald Trump’s campaign team says that “‘Kamabla’ represents all the pain and misery that the Biden-Harris administration has inflicted on every American.”
A nebulous explanation, which has given rise to several avenues of interpretation. The first, the suffix “-bla” of “Kamabla” could refer to the onomatopoeia “blah, blah, blah”, thus implying that the vice president would talk too much, and that her words would have little importance. Second possibility: “Kamabla” would be a contraction of “Kamala” and “Obama”. And for good reason, on several occasions during the campaign, Donald Trump assured that the former American president was pulling the levers of the Biden administration.
Others believe the Grand Old Party candidate would target Harris’ Indian and African-American background by trying to introduce the word “black” in his first name. But “it could simply be a misspelling that Trump uses to show his superiority,” also suggests The Independent, which draws attention to Donald Trump calling Florida Governor Ron DeSantis “Rob” during the Republican primary campaign.
Republicans, Donald Trump’s other targets
So, the conservative billionaire doesn’t limit himself to his Democratic opponents. Members of his own party also have the right to their nickname. His main competitor in the Republican primaries, Nikki Haley, was particularly affected. Also on his Truth Social network, Donald Trump renamed her “Birdbrain”. In early October, the governor of South Carolina published a tweet with a photo of a bird cage placed in front of her hotel room and signed: “From Trump Campaign”.
Another opponent of Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, Ron DeSantis, has been nicknamed “Ron DeSanctimonious” (“Ron the moralizer”), “Meatball Ron” (“Ron the meatball”), or even “Tiny D. the Maga singer” (for “Make America Great Again”, campaign slogan used by Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign and taken up by Donald Trump) also earned the nickname “Sloppy Steve” (“Steve the Neglected”) his former strategist Steve Bannon, sentenced to four months in prison for obstructing the parliamentary investigation into the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. A sentence that the septuagenarian has been serving since the beginning of July.
A Wikipedia page dedicated to nicknames invented by Trump
The use of nicknames has a double advantage for Donald Trump. The first, to humiliate and discredit his political rivals. The second, to galvanize his electoral base, which expects him to do so. Having become his trademark in a few years, this strategy, halfway between classic political attack and cynicism, is not limited to his political adversaries.
A Wikipedia page even lists all the nicknames used by the former president. Like the one he used in 2018 to tackle CNN president Jeff Zucker, calling him “Little Jeff Zuker” in a tweet. An adjective attached a few years earlier to the name of the singer Mac Miller, who has since died, who had released a song called “Donald Trump”. Or even the famous portmanteau word “kung flu”, used to refer to the Covid-19 virus, which originated in China.
Donald Trump running out of ideas?
For Kamala Harris, the nicknames are numerous and punctuate the public appearances of the former president of the United States. During the meeting on Wednesday, August 21, the first since his assassination attempt, Donald Trump attacked his opponent, calling her “Comrade Harris” before specifying: “I call her that, because she is a Marxist.” Among her nicknames, we also find: “Crazy Kamala”, “Lyin’ Kamala”, or even “Laffin’ Kamala” in reference to the many bursts of laughter of the former prosecutor of California.
“Failed Border Czar” is also frequently used by the Trumpist camp to denounce the Biden administration’s management of migration policy. Thus implying that the vice president would be responsible for border management during her term. Which is not exactly the case, since the mission entrusted to her by the tenant of the White House consists of “tackling the root causes of illegal immigration”, her entourage defended to our colleagues at the BBC.
Deviating from reality, however, is not a concern for Donald Trump. Fueling his fan base in horn blows that she can in turn take up to shoot at the opposing camp is one. Except that, for the moment, none of the nicknames found by the owner of Mar-a-Lago for Kamala Harris seem to take. The leader of the conservatives also seems to be still looking for his winning formula. A sudden lack of creativity that masks a broader difficulty: how to find the right angle of attack against Kamala Harris?