Trump Flubs Pronunciation of 'Tanzania'

ByMEGHAN KENEALLY ABCNews logo
Wednesday, April 27, 2016

One of the moments from Donald Trump's foreign policy speech that attracted the most attention wasn't intentional.

People watching Trump's speech quickly turned to social media to joke about how the GOP front-runner mispronunced "Tanzania."

This isn't the first time that a presidential hopeful has had a slip of the tongue when it comes to pronunciation, as pizza mogul turned 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain infamously said that he didn't know the name of the president of "Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan."

The subject matter certainly wasn't light -- Trump brought up the African nation when talking about the 1998 bombing of the American embassy there -- but that didn't stop social media from erupting in laughter. And memes.

His former competitor, Sen. Lindsey Graham, didn't specifically address the mispronunciation, but criticized the speech for "#notmakinganysense."

White House press secretary Josh Earnest wasn't above the fray either.

At the start of his press conference, which began while Trump's speech was still going on, Earnest took a jab at the Tanzania flub.

"Apparently the phonetics were not included on the teleprompter," Earnest said, both goading Trump for the mispronunciation and his use of a teleprompter. Trump has repeatedly criticized politicians that use teleprompters and the real estate mogul has only used them at one other event during the campaign.

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