CHARLOTTE — In one of his first mentions of the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Donald Trump told a Wednesday night crowd here that “KAH-mala” Harris was the “new victim we have to defeat.”
A short time later, tying her to the war in Ukraine, he went with a different variation of her first name: “KUH-mala.”
And about halfway through his speech, he promised to name migrant crime after “Kah-MAL-a.”
Again and again at Trump’s campaign rally, the former president invoked her by first name. His 90-minute speech included about four dozen references — and in many of those, he botched the pronunciation. It wasn’t a first for Trump — he similarly botched it in 2020, even cracking jokes in the process.
With Vice President Harris now expected to head the Democratic ticket this fall, political figures are saying “Kamala” more and more. Often, instead of the correct “COMMA-la,” they’re saying it wrong.
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Trump and other prominent Republicans are the most public offenders, with Harris’s 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’s ticket.
At the Republican National Convention last week, nearly half of the speakers who uttered Harris’s first name blew it. Bob Unanue, the chief executive of Goya Foods, mockingly uttered “Qué mala,” which means “so bad” 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 — both of whom are Indian American.
Harris’s campaign has placed a special emphasis on her first name — which in Sanskrit means “lotus,” an important symbol in Indian culture — by relabeling “BidenHarrisHQ” social media channels to “KamalaHQ” and handing out white-and-navy-blue signs that declare “KAMALA” in a bold sans serif type on one side and “USA” on the other.
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Asked Wednesday about Trump’s latest flub and whether it was intentional, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung texted “Hahahahaha!”
“Kamala Harris has even pronounced her name in different ways,” Cheung added. When asked for evidence to support that claim, he did not respond.
Aimee Allison, founder of She The People, a group that supports women of color seeking political office, said Trump’s voters have hardened to the rhetoric he uses, but it has the potential to turn off others or trigger people’s feelings about not belonging.
“He’s going to continue his strategy of name calling and dehumanization to attempt to rally his base, and this is just another way he’s actually message testing,” she said. “Mispronouncing a name is a common tactic used by people who try to do what we call ‘other,’ to other someone.”
Several women of color have used Anglicized names to appeal to a broader base of voters. Haley was born as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa but long used her middle name as her first. After she went into politics, she dropped her maiden name because it “wouldn’t fit on a yard sign,” as she told the Charlotte Observer in 2010. Yet Trump repeatedly referred to her as “Nimbra” when the two faced off in the primaries this cycle.
Trump also taunted his immediate predecessor in the White House, referring to the 44th president as “Barack Hussein Obama,” with an emphasis on his Arabic middle name. He also shared false conspiracy theories that Harris and Obama, as well as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), have questionable citizenship claims. Both were born to American mothers, Obama in Hawaii and Cruz in Canada.
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The crowd at Wednesday’s rally in Charlotte jeered during Trump’s repeated mentions of Harris. Afterward, some said they didn’t notice him saying her name wrong. Others excused him.
The Republican candidate for state education superintendent, Michele Morrow, who has made her own controversial statements calling for violence against Democrats, said she didn’t hear any mispronunciation by Trump. And, like Cheung, she claimed Harris had stumbled over her own name in the past.
“I’ve heard she actually used to pronounce her name ‘Camela’ like “Pamela” back in the day,” she said, citing a Caribbean newspaper that ran an incorrect headline of “It’s Kamala, Rhymes With Pamela” in 2020. Pressed further, Morrow blamed a friend for telling her it was Harris who got her own name wrong.
Incendiary attacks such as Trump’s aren’t 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.
“This is a conscious decision to use her full ethnic name,” she said. “Kamala is [in] a league of her own compared to her peers.”
correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly said Sen. Ted Cruz was born in the United States. He was born in Canada to an American mother. The article has been corrected.
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