Public figures mispronounce words all the time, but UK's Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's curious way of saying Jeffery Epstein's name landed the Labour leader in hot water.
While facing off against Prime Minister Boris Johnson at a televised debate on Tuesday night, Corbyn responded to a question regarding Prince Andrew's alleged close ties with Epstein.
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Corbyn pronounced the disgraced sex offender's name as Ep-shtein, which some perceived as the politician going out of his way to emphasize his Jewishness.
Boris Johnson pronounced his name correctly.
Video: Reuters
"Jeremy Corbyn's risible attempt to deceive viewers about his handling of Labour's anti-Semitism crisis was compounded by his bizarre and inconsistent pronunciation of the Jewish surname of the late billionaire sexual predator, Jeffrey Epstein, referring to him at one point as ''Ep-shtein,'" a spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism, said
Naturally, Jewish Twitter had a field day with Corbyn's misstep.
Jewish Tory peer Lord Daniel Finkelstein chimed in and said, "'calling me Finkel SHTEIN is one of my tests' for anti-Semitism."
British-born journalist Anshel Pfeffer at Haaretz also took umbrage with Corbyn's pronunciation.
"This is really astonishing. Jeffrey Epstein's name has been mentioned 1000s of times in news reports, ALWAYS in the Americanized pronunciation," Pfeffer, said. "But Corbyn, calls him EPSHTEIN, twice, in a debate he's been well prepared for, in the JEWISH pronunciation."
