Biden mangles name of Asian-American producer Joan Shigekawa for second time in 2 months

By 
 May 10, 2023

President Joe Biden on Monday brutally mangled the name of an Asian-American film producer that he was seeking to honor during a White House event, according to The Dan Bongino Show.

Biden horribly mispronounced the name of Joan Shigekawa while promoting a new Disney show about Asian immigrants to America.

Incredibly, it is actually the second time in just two months that the president has struggled with the proper pronunciation of Shigekawa's name.

"I’m going to pronounce it wrong"

Monday evening in the East Room of the White House was a screening of the new Disney program "American Born Chinese" as part of the Biden administration's celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

About midway through his prepared remarks, Biden referenced a White House event in March and said, "Earlier this year, I honored a group of trailblazing artists with National Medals of Arts and Humanities" -- only to pronounce "trailblazing" as "trailbrazing."

"The group included groundbreaking Asian Americans like Vera Wang and -- and -- and Joan Shingang- -- Shin- -- I’m -- I’m going to pronounce it wrong -- Shangaka- -- -kawawa," he stated and then joked, "I think I pronounced it correctly. She can call me 'Joe Bidden.'"

Same struggle with pronunciation, same lame joke as a follow-up

Mediaite reported that President Biden had similarly struggled with how to pronounce Shigekawa's name on March 21 during a White House ceremony, also held in the East Room, to award the National Humanities Medals and National Medals of Arts to nearly two dozen recipients.

One of those recipients was Shigekawa, who was actually compelled to correct the president's mispronunciation of her name in real-time during that event.

In his speech, Biden sought to honor "The contribution of Joan Shi- -- Shi- ..." and was saved from further embarrassment by the recipient herself, who interjected, "Shigekawa."

"Shigekawa. Thank you. I have trouble pronouncing. You can call me 'Bidden,'" he replied.

"Shigekawa. Your contributions to art in America is legendary and is lasting. And the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, she’s lifted rural and urban artists, created programs for military families, and helped measure how the art grows the economy -- arts grow the economy," Biden added. "And she proves that art makes our country stronger."

Advance preparation can avoid this problem

To be sure, foreign names can sometimes be difficult for some people to accurately pronounce, but that said, often a few repetitions of a particular name ahead of time to work out any mispronunciations, especially in planned events such as routinely occur at the White House, can help to avoid such issues.

The fact that Biden has now mangled this same woman's name twice in the span of less than two months is just embarrassing, however.

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