‘Kechangie Brown Jackson’: Trump mangles Supreme Court Justice’s name during GOP rally

Former president has a history of purposely mispronouncing Black women’s names as he repeatedly mocked Kamala Harris’ name during the 2020 White House race

Donald Trump mangled Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s name, disrespectfully calling her “Kechangie Brown Jackson” on stage at a GOP rally in Anchorage, Alaska.

The former president, who has a history of purposely mispronouncing Black women’s names, hit out at the newly-appointed justice in front of a crowd of supporters on Saturday night.

At the time, he was laying into Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski who faces Trump-endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka in her run for reelection this November.

Branding Ms Murkowski “worse than a Democrat” and a “lousy senator”, Mr Trump fumed that she – along with two other Republican senators – had joined all 50 Democrats in voting to approve Justice Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court in April.

“She voted to approve Joe Biden’s radical left justice ‘Kechangie Brown Jackson’,” he said.

“The most far-left justice in history by a factor of about six.”

This isn’t the first time Mr Trump has butchered the pronunciation of the name of a woman of colour.

During his unsuccessful 2020 White House race, Mr Trump came under fire for repeatedly mispronouncing and mocking the first name of then-Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

At one rally in October 2020, he mocked Ms Harris for getting “very upset” about her name and claimed that she couldn’t pronounce it herself.

“KAH-ma-la. You have to pronounce it exactly right, otherwise, she gets very upset, even though she can’t pronounce it right,” he said.

Other prominent Republicans also joined in the attack on the name of the first woman and woman of colour to become vice president in the United States, with then-GOP Senator David Perdue also sparking outrage over his comments.

“KAH-mah-lah? Kah-MAH-lah? Kamala-mala-mala? I don’t know. Whatever,” he said at one Trump rally.

Perdue later lost his Senate seat to Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Ms Harris hit out at Republicans over the saga, saying that “it’s about respect and it’s about respect for all that comes with a name”.

Donald Trump speaks on stage at a GOP rally in Anchorage, Alaska, on 9 July (Getty Images)

Mr Trump’s mispronunciation of Justice Jackson’s name comes just days after she was sworn in as the first Black woman to become a justice on the nation’s highest court.

The former president has made it clear that he isn’t happy about her appointment, accusing her of being “unbelievably disrespectful” in her confirmation hearings to Republican Senators who he claimed were “really nicely asking questions”.

The highly-regarded judge took on the former president several times in the past during her time on the district court in Washington.

In 2019, she issued a scathing ruling on Mr Trump’s claim that his White House advisers were shielded from being subpoenaed to appear before Congress.

“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” she wrote at the time.

Aside from his mispronunciation of the justice’s name and attack on Ms Murkowski, Mr Trump used his speech on Saturday night to call Elon Musk “another bulls*** artist”, to claim climate change would lead to “a little more beachfront property” and to continue to push his long-running and disproven “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him.

Mr Trump was speaking at the event to rally behind Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka and House candidate Sarah Palin ahead of Alaska’s primary next month.

The appearance comes ahead of two more public hearings this week by the House committee investigating the former president’s involvement in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol which attempted to upend democracy and overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.

The first hearing will be held on Tuesday, looking into evidence on how the crowd that stormed the Capitol was gathered, including focuding on far-right extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

A second session has also been scheduled for Thursday.