CHARLOTTE \u2014 In his first mention of the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Donald Trump told a Wednesday night crowd here that \u201cKAH-mala\u201d Harris was the \u201cnew victim we have to defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n
A short time later, tying her to the war in Ukraine, he went with a different variation of her first name: \u201cKUH-mala.\u201d<\/p>\n
And about halfway through his speech, he promised to name migrant crime after \u201cKah-MAL-a.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again and again at Trump\u2019s campaign rally, the former president invoked her by first name. His 90-minute speech included about four dozen references \u2014 and in many of those, he botched the pronunciation. It wasn\u2019t a first for Trump \u2014 he similarly botched it in 2020, even cracking jokes in the process.<\/p>\n
With Vice President Harris now expected to head the Democratic ticket this fall, political figures are saying \u201cKamala\u201d more and more. Often, instead of the correct \u201cCOMMA-la,\u201d they\u2019re saying it wrong.<\/p>\n
Trump and other prominent Republicans are the most public offenders, with Harris\u2019s supporters accusing them of intentionally bungling the pronunciation or using it as a racist dog whistle about the first Black woman and the first Asian American woman named to a major party\u2019s ticket.<\/p>\n
At the GOP national convention last week, nearly half of the speakers who uttered Harris\u2019s first name blew it. Bob Unanue, the chief executive of Goya Foods, mockingly uttered \u201cQue mala\u201d \u2014 which translates as \u201cso bad\u201d in Spanish. Among the speakers who offered a correct pronunciation: former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley and Usha Vance, the wife of Trump running mate JD Vance \u2014 both of whom are Indian American.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s campaign has placed a special emphasis on her first name \u2014 which in Sanskrit means \u201clotus flower,\u201d an important symbol in Indian culture \u2014 by relabeling \u201cBidenHarrisHQ\u201d social media channels to \u201cKamalaHQ\u201d and handing out white and navy blue signs that declare \u201cKAMALA\u201d in a bold san-serif on one side and \u201cUSA\u201d on the other.<\/p>\n
Asked Wednesday about Trump\u2019s latest flub and whether it was intentional, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung texted \u201cHahahahaha!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKamala Harris has even pronounced her name in different ways,\u201d Cheung added. When asked for evidence to support that claim, he did not respond.<\/p>\n
Aimee Allison, founder of She The People, a group that supports women of color seeking political office, said Trump\u2019s voters have hardened to the rhetoric he uses, but it has the potential to turn off others or trigger people\u2019s feelings about not belonging.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s going to continue his strategy of name calling and dehumanization, to attempt to rally his base, and this is just another way he\u2019s actually message testing,\u201d she said. \u201cMispronouncing a name is a common tactic used by people who try to do what we call other, to other someone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other women of color, such as Haley, have used Anglicized names to appeal to a broader base of voters. She was born as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa but adopted her middle name as her first before she went into politics and then dropped her maiden name because it \u201cwouldn\u2019t fit on a yard sign,\u201d as she told the Charlotte Observer in 2010. Yet neither moved stopped Trump from repeatedly referring to her as \u201cNimbra\u201d when the two faced off in the primaries this cycle.<\/p>\n
Trump also taunted his immediate predecessor in the White House, referring to the 44th president as \u201cBarack Hussein Obama\u201d with an emphasis on that middle name. He also shared false conspiracy theories that Harris and Obama, as well as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have questionable citizenship claims \u2014 despite each having been born in the United States.<\/p>\n
The crowd at Wednesday\u2019s rally in Charlotte jeered Trump\u2019s repeated mentions of Harris. Afterward, some said they didn\u2019t notice him saying her name wrong. Others excused him.<\/p>\n
The Republican candidate for state education superintendent, Michele Morrow, who has made her own controversial statements calling for violence against Democrats, said she didn\u2019t hear any mispronunciation by Trump. And, like Cheung, she claimed Harris had stumbled over her own name in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve heard she actually used to pronounce her name \u2018Camela\u2019 like \u201cPamela\u201d back in the day,\u201d she said, citing a local Caribbean newspaper that ran an incorrect headline of \u201cIt\u2019s Kamala, Rhymes With Pamela\u201d in 2020. Pressed further, Morrow blamed a friend for telling her it was Harris who got her own name wrong.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s incendiary attacks aren\u2019t just happening on a national scale. Nadia Brown, a Georgetown University political scientist, said that she has heard similar stories while holding focus groups with Black women in politics. But Brown said Harris is pushing back in a unique way by fully embracing her first name.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a conscious decision to use her full ethnic name,\u201d she said. \u201cKamala is [in] a league of her own compared to her peers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
CHARLOTTE \u2014 In his first mention of the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Donald Trump told a Wednesday night crowd here that \u201cKAH-mala\u201d Harris was the \u201cnew victim we have to defeat.\u201d A short time later, tying her to the war in Ukraine, he went with a different variation of her first name: \u201cKUH-mala.\u201d And about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}