Donald Trump called Kamala Harris a “bum” and joked about mispronouncing her name in a speech in Florida on Friday night.
Trump is among many Republicans who have deliberately mispronounced Vice President Kamala Harris’s name, sparking anger among some liberals.
The former president mocked the idea at an event in West Palm Beach for Turning Point.
He began by talking about the vice president, whom he declared “worse than Joe Biden and in some ways much more liberal,” before pointing out that he had pronounced her name correctly.
“And by the way, there are many ways to say her name. They explained it to me: you can say Kamala, you can say Kamala. I told them don’t worry. It doesn’t matter what she says. I don’t care if I pronounce it wrong,” Trump said.
Donald Trump called Kamala Harris a “bum” and joked about mispronouncing her name in a speech in Florida on Friday night
Trump was generally scathing about Harris and apparently shocked by the liberals’ sudden shift in her favor, given her record.
“Three weeks ago she was a vagabond, a vagabond. A failed vice president, in a failed administration, with millions of people crossing the border and she was the border czar.”
He also criticized her for skipping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and saying she did not like Jews.
“He refused to attend the speech because that’s his original idea, that’s where it came from. He doesn’t like Jews, he doesn’t like Israel.”
Vice President Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, is Jewish, while Harris held a one-on-one meeting with Netanyahu on Friday. Harris is also stepmother to Emhoff’s two children with his first wife, who are also Jewish.
Harris became the presumptive presidential nominee earlier this week when Joe Biden announced he would no longer seek a second term.
The correct pronunciation of Harris’s name has been a high-profile issue since she was named as Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020.
Instead of the correct ‘KA’-ma-la’, Trump sometimes says ‘Ka-MAH-la’.
The discourse around Harris’s name is well documented: The Washington Post wrote a piece about all the people who got it wrong during the Republican National Convention last week.
Trump was generally scathing about Harris and apparently shocked by the liberals’ sudden shift in her favor, given her record.
Harris, of Indian and Jamaican descent, is the first woman to become vice president and the third non-white person to serve as president or vice president, after Obama and Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover’s vice president, who was of Native American descent.
The discourse surrounding Harris’s name is well documented: The Washington Post wrote a piece about all the people who got it wrong during last week’s Republican National Convention.
They joined the likes of Tucker Carlson, who lost his temper after his pronunciation was questioned in 2020.
Trump has also historically used the name clumsily or made a show of exaggerating it in a seemingly mocking manner.
Critics believe the mispronunciation is a deliberate tactic to draw attention to Harris’ heritage as a Black and Indian woman.
Harris herself addressed the issue, posting a video in 2016 in which she used children to help educate people.
“People pronounce my name in so many different ways. Let #KidsForKamala show you how it’s done,” she said.
And in a 2019 memoir, Harris wrote: “My name is pronounced ‘comma-la,’ like the punctuation mark. It means ‘lotus flower,’ which is a symbol of importance in Indian culture.”
However, even Biden has gotten into trouble before, butchering his vice president’s name during a 2019 speech recognizing the Golden State Warriors for winning the NBA Championship.