Trump mercilessly mocked for being unable to pronounce ‘Yosemite’

Donald Trump is not the best when it comes to pronunciation.

Among the list of words he’s previously struggled to pronounce are “anonymous”, “Venezuela”, “statistics”, “totalitarianism”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s name and “Tanzania” – to name a few.

And now we can add the Yosemite National Park to the list.

As the POTUS was signing the new Great American Outdoors Act – which will provide $9.5billion (£7.2billion) in funding to address a maintenance backlog at American national parks – on Tuesday, he was reading out some prepared remarks.

He said:

When young Americans experience the breathtaking beauty of the Grand Canyon, when their eyes widen in amazement as Old Faithful bursts into the sky...

And then came the gaffe.

The POTUS paused for a brief moment before attempting to pronounce the name of the hugely popular national park. He also repeated the word, but added some letters in for good measure:

When they gaze upon Yosemite's — Yoseminite's (sic) towering sequoias, their love of country grows stronger and they know that every American has truly a duty to preserve this wondrous inheritance.

For reference, Yosemite is pronounced “yoh-SEM-i-tee” and not “Semite” – which is a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs.

Thousands took to Twitter to mock Trump for his mispronunciation:

And then came the Yosemite Sam cartoon references:

Earlier this week, Trump misspelled “Florida” as “Frorida” in a tweet. He’s also previously deleted a tweet after misspelling his own wife’s name wrong.

Looks like no one is safe...