A day after reading the word "Yosemite" and pronouncing it "Yo semites", President Trump, in a speech yesterday, stumbled over the name of Thailand, mispronouncing it as "Thighland". To his credit, he quickly corrected himself and pronounced it properly.
But one of his biggest supporters, Dinesh D'Souza (who Trump pardoned a year or two ago) jumped on Twitter to argue that the correct English pronunciation is really "Thighland", that this is the way the rest of the English-speaking world pronounces it, and that we Americans are a bunch of low-brow knuckle-draggers who can't appreciate Trump as the cosmopolitan world traveler he is. This is the same cosmopolitan world traveler who though Belgium was a city and that Finland was part of Russia.
Of course, D'Souza is out of his mind - NO ONE has ever called it "Thighland". But when Twitter users jumped all over him and basically called him an idiot, D'Souza doubled down and insisted he was right and the rest of the English-speaking world was wrong. This is the type of blind loyalty to the leader that makes Trumpism a cult.
I suppose we should be grateful that Trump didn't have to mention the name of the Thai province Phuket (pronounced "pu-ket", in case you're wondering).
Someone on Twitter said he would pay money to see our stable genius try to read the word "coccyx" out loud. Now THAT would be entertaining.
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