Kamala Harris Joker Vibes

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Part of a series on Kamala Harris. [View Related Entries]

About

Kamala Harris Joker Vibes refers to a series of memes likening United States Vice President Kamala Harris to comic book character Joker, mainly over her manner of laughing. Sparked by a 2021 press conference video, the meme achieved recognition in 2022 after a video of Kamala Harris singing "The Wheels on the Bus" and laughing went viral.

Origin

On July 18th, 2020, United States Senator Kamala Harris appeared on PoliticsNation on MSNBC, sparking a rumor that she had undergone a cosmetic procedure or plastic surgery. On July 19th, 2020, X^[1] / Twitter user @DadRyan2018 posted an image of Harris on the show next to an image of Jack Nickolson's Joker, commenting, "Did she go to the Joker's plastic surgeon?" The post (shown below) has since been removed.

On March 29th, 2021, X^[2] user @MythinformedMKE posted a clip of Kamala Harris bursting into laughter while speaking about affordable childcare and the value of educators. On March 30th, political commentator Tim Pool quoted the video, writing, "I think Kamala is the joker." The post (shown below) received over 870 reposts and 7,400 likes in three years.

More people are seeing that affordable childcare is a big deal. More people are seeing the value of educators [starts laughing] when they had to bring their kids and say, "We're not paying them nearly enough!"

Spread

In the weeks following Pool's post, more posts comparing Kamala Harris and Joker were shared online. On April 2nd, 2021, the satirical news website The Babylon Bee posted^[3] an article titled "Warner Bros Casts Kamala Harris as the Joker," which received over 1,200 reposts and 7,800 likes on X^[4] / Twitter in three years (shown below, left).

In early April 2021, an unknown user posted a photoshopped image of Kamala Harris made to look like Joker (shown below, right).^[5] In 2021 and the following years, the image was widely circulated and used in memes about Harris.^[6]

On November 10th, 2022, X^[7] user @gothjafar posted a video of Kamala Harris walking towards her bus, singing the "The Wheels on a Bus" nursery rhyme and laughing, commenting, "the joker before blowing up a bus in gotham." The post referenced a scene from the 2008 film The Dark Knight in which Joker walks away from an exploding hospital and boards a school bus to drive away, and gained over 37,000 reposts and 293,000 likes in one year (shown below).

More posts humorously likening Kamala Harris to Joker appeared in 2023 and 2024.