Is Donald Trump confusing Kamala Harris with a wrestler? Why is he trying to confuse us? | Opinion
One of pro wrestling’s biggest superstars in the showbiz 1980s was a menacing, 350-pound villain with the stage name “Kamala.”
In the years when New York millionaire Donald Trump was a WrestleMania host and one of the sport’s biggest fanboys, he knew Mississippi performer James “Kamala” Harris — pronounced “kuh-MAH-lah.”
Forty years later, Trump evokes memories of a nefarious wrestling character billed as “The Ugandan Giant” every time he intentionally mispronounces Vice President Kamala Harris’ name that way instead of “COMM-a-lah.”
The late World Wrestling Entertainment star — a despised opponent for Hulk Hogan or in Texas for the Von Erichs — “definitely met Trump,” said fellow wrestling performer Kenny Casanova, his biographer.
“Trump came into the dressing room and wanted to shake everybody’s hand,” Casanova said.
“He wanted to meet all the guys he always watched on TV.”
James Harris, a former sharecropper and truck driver from north Mississippi, dressed in garish face and body paint to perform as “Kamala, the Ugandan Giant,” a ferocious tribal warrior who defeated opponents simply by lifting them, dashing them to the mat and throwing his giant body on top.
Wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler came up with the name, Casanova said, and misnamed Uganda’s capital city of Kampala. (The actual name Kamala is common in India.)
Wrestling’s Kamala wore a tribal mask and loincloth. He even carried a spear.
Once, he acted out eating a live chicken.
“They came up with this idea,” Casanova said. “Let’s make you a crazy guy from the jungle.”
Even in the bizarre, cartoonish theater of pro wrestling, it was threatening, shocking and shamelessly racist and xenophobic.
And every time Trump mispronounces his Black and South Asian opponent’s name, thousands of southern voters and TV viewers think of that Kamala.
The wrestler himself “went along with it — he played it as if he was playing a role in a movie,” Casanova said.
He was not aware of politics, Casanova said.
Once, the wrestler tried to register a website to sell souvenirs. He was surprised that another Kamala Harris had already registered www.kamala.com.
“He said, ‘Who’s this using my name? — I don’t know this person,” Casanova said.
By 2020, he was selling joking “Kamala Harris for President” T-shirts with his painted face. His family now sells a 2024 version.
Trump is simply tangling the names, said Casanova, author of “Kamala Speaks” (WOHW Publishing, 352 pages, $29.99).
The mispronunciation “has gotta be that,” Casanova said.
Two weeks ago at an evangelical political event, Trump made it clear that the mispronunciation is completely intentional.
“Actually, I’ve heard it said about seven different ways,” Trump said. “I couldn’t care less if i mispronounce it or not. I couldn’t care less.”
One wrestling pop culture expert said he might be trying to subconsciously connect Harris to the wrestling villain.
“I think it’s a connection to definitely make and ponder,” Sam Ford emailed.
Ford has has taught a media studies class, “American Pro Wrestling,” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Wrestling fans have certainly seen the connection,” Ford wrote.
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Another professor was more blunt.
“My opinion is that he mispronounces her name out of a combination of ignorance and blatant disrespect,” Steve Granelli wrote.
He teaches a media studies course on wrestling in pop culture at Northeastern University in Boston.
But if Trump “actually had the mental acuity to mispronounce her name to try to connect her name with Kamala the wrestler,” Granelli said, “he wouldn’t be able to do it without telling everyone in the next breath that he was doing it.”
This match is still in the early rounds.
This story was originally published August 8, 2024 at 10:44 AM.
