The host of CNN’s New Day, Alisyn Camerota, was seen making a very insensitive and racist remark to twelve year old girl while interviewing her; after she had won the national spelling bee.
Camerota and co-host jokingly asked Ananya Vinay, to spell the word “covfefe;” while interviewing the young girl of Indian origin after her big win at the Scripps National Spelling Be competition, one of the most recognized spelling competitions within the USA.
“Covfefe” was an accidental typo made by President Donald Trump, on one of his many tweets on Twitter. Ever since the tweet was published, it has gone viral with memes and jokes of all sort being based upon it.
Vinay attempted to spell the impossible, she left out the “v.” To this, Camerota chimed in and called it a “nonsense word.” However, the worst happened when she went to remark Vinay about not being sure as whether the root of the word comes Sanskrit, “which is probably what you’re used to using.”
It is has been noted that while Vinay’s family origin is from India, she is actually from Fresno, California.
Moreover, Vinay’s family is of Kerala-origin and the primary language spoken in Kerala is Malayalam, and definitely not Sanskrit. In fact, Sanskrit is only spoken by less than one percent of Indians today and that too usually by Hindu priests during religious ceremonies.
A spokeswoman for CNN spoke with the Washington Post and said otherwise. She stated that Camoreta’s comment had nothing to do with Ananya’s heritage.
“Alisyn made the same joking reference to the root of ‘covfefe’ in an earlier panel discussion that aired Wednesday,” she told the Washington Post.
“If she’s guilty of anything it’s recycling a joke. To assign a bias to what was a fun and innocent segment celebrating Ananya Vinay’s incredible accomplishment is frankly extremely cynical.”
