This is true, though it’s because the hard “t” in most Indian languages is different than the one used in English (more below), and it would be unnatural in the Indian accent. They also pronounce “w”s as “v”s and refer to toast as “bread toast” which I assume Trump doesn’t do 1/ https://twitter.com/dineshdsouza/status/1291616171503091713

2. A hard “t” in Indian phonetic sounds require you to put your tongue towards that back of the roof of your mouth, not behind the front part of your teeth as in America. There is a hard “l” which you make the same way — neither of these sounds has an equivalent in English

3. So if you are in the course of speaking an Indian language, you might use a soft “t,” more like a “th” because the hard “t” would actually require you to use the hard “l” (for fluidity) which would *also* sound weird (to flip from the hard “t” to the soft “l” is kinda hard)

4. I actually practiced this, saying “Thailand” as a sentence in Kannada (my family’s language), and in an Indian accent (where you are using the same mouth/tongue placements). The real point here is...

5. Last time I checked, Trump neither speaks a South Asian language nor has an Indian accent, so why is this a point of comparison??? In fact, MAGAs tell my parents to “speak real English” because they have an accent (and though they speak it perfectly), so same applies to Trump?

P.S. I’m not defending Dinesh — quite the opposite — pointing out that the pronunciation in a region that literally doesn’t use equivalent sounds is dumb. In Bogota, people called me “Acha” (which means “ax”) bc there is no “sh” sound in Spanish. Trump doing that would be wrong.