South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace insisted on mispronouncing Vice President Kamala Harris’ first name multiple times during a CNN segment Thursday night, and was promptly—and repeatedly—called out for doing so.
In the latest instance of Republicans and conservative commentators not getting a simple, three-syllable name right—one which just so happens to belong to the first biracial female vice president—Mace declared that she would say the name “any way that I want to.”
“Talk about reruns, Kamala’s—Kamala’s,” Mace began, saying it correctly the first time but botching it right after by emphasizing the second syllable. Immediately, some of the other panelists on CNN Newsnight confronted her about it.
“You had it right! You almost got it,” former Clinton White House aide Keith Boykin said.
But Mace, who, as the Daily Beast reported last year, craves national TV spots, decided to take a stand on this.
“I will say Kamala’s name any way that I want to,” she pressed on, mispronouncing it once more.
“No,” shot back Michael Eric Dyson, an author, professor, and CNN commentator. “But you mispronounced her, and you also misjudged her.”
“I just did and I’ll do it again,” Mace said.
Boykin then told her that if he were to mispronounce Mace’s name on purpose, that wouldn’t fly. Dyson, meanwhile, summed up her actions as “normalizing” an attitude of “disrespect.”
Mace joins the ranks of Donald Trump, former Georgia Senator David Perdue, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson as some of those who have bungled Harris’s name. When asked about it late last month, Trump claimed he “couldn’t care less.”
And it seems Mace couldn’t either. About twenty minutes later, she did it again, spurring even more intense pushback from Dyson and Boykin.
Mace claimed she wasn’t doing so intentionally—despite having repeatedly been told the proper way to say it.
Moments later, Mace added still more to her controversial appearance. When given the chance to condemn Donald Trump for questioning Harris’s race, Mace actually claimed she didn’t hear what anchor Abby Phillip was referencing.
“I didn’t hear him say it. I didn’t hear what he said about her race,” Mace said. “I am not going to weigh in on her race.”
