Surely, the White House has someone on the staff who can teach the President how to pronounce the word “corpsman.”  It would also be great if someone in media knew what a corpsman is, but the Harvard-educated press’s knowledge of anything having to do with the military is limited to the phrases  ”baby killers” and “exit strategy,” so there’s probably not much hope there.

And maybe somebody else could point out that the Haitian Creole word for America — transliterated here as “Etazini,” but more commonly spelled “Zetazini”– is derived the French les États-Unis, and not from an Italian recipe for stuffed pasta shells.

Here’s the transcript of the TOTUS-assisted speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday:

One such translator was an American of Haitian descent, representative of the extraordinary work that our men and women in uniform do all around the world — Navy Corpsman Christian [sic] Brossard.  And lying on a gurney aboard the USNS Comfort, a woman asked Christopher:  “Where do you come from?  What country?  After my operation,” she said, “I will pray for that country.”  And in Creole, Corpsman Brossard responded, “Etazini.”  The United States of America.

And here’s how the Harvard-educated President delivered those remarks:


Isn’t this the same man who said that more Americans should learn a foreign language — even though he doesn’t speak any himself?

It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup, right?

Speak for yourself, Mr. President.