By Sushil Kutty
United States President Donald Trump is no less a boor than all of the boors who preceded him including the Jack and the Beanstalk ogre and cousins thereof. President Trump’s choice of words hurts even a snail engrossed in negotiating a curve in the beanstalk. Trump has called India all sorts of names including “obnoxious” and “bad economy” and has doubled up in courting India’s No.1 enemy, Pakistan, feting its runaway jihadi Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Gen Asim Munir like he was lost and found.
Now, after being told as many times as he has fingers and toes, Trump is back to his dubious claim that his was the hand which guided India and Pakistan to the “ceasefire” table. Trump is a diabetic foot ulcer, never stops and it is hard to dislodge him from his fixated wandering mind, which these days is stuck irrevocably on the India record.
President Trump is obsessed with India. There’s the report of a German newspaper that Trump’s White House called Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s PMO and announced Trump was on the line to bring Modi in line! But Modi’s mandarins told Trump officials that Modi was too busy. The German newspaper counted four Trump calls and was each time told Modi wasn’t available.
But there is skepticism and there are claims that Prime Minister Modi’s NAMO supporters are lying and that to get the true story, talk to Trump’s MAGA supporters. Prime Minister Modi had recently pitted MIGA (make India great again) against MAGA (make America great again) but that did not click despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi being an accomplished practitioner of four-letter anagrams.
President Trump is a five-letter wonder, from his surname ‘Trump’ to the ‘Nobel’ he craves. Trump wants to be recognized as the keeper of peace between all nations. And Trump’s weapon of choice, ‘tariff’, a six-letter horrendous dictatorial dictionary creation. Trump claimed he “personally intervened” and stopped a nuclear-war and used tariffs to enforce the ceasefire.
“I am talking to a very terrific man, Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. I said, “What’s going on with you and Pakistan, the hatred was tremendous,” Trump said in his latest attempt at convincing the world that he is a man of peace and prosperity, the prosperity only to America. But Modi is unconvinced, a little something Trump hadn’t thought Modi was capable of and the two aren’t “my friend-mera dost” anymore.
Get a glimpse of Trump’s la la land hallucinations: “…I am talking to a very terrific man, Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. I said what’s going on with you and Pakistan. Then I am talking to Pakistan about trade. I said what’s going on with you and India? The hatred was tremendous. This has been going on for a…,” Trump posted on ‘X’ on August 27.He claimed tensions between India and Pakistan have been going on “for a hell of a long time, like, sometimes with different names for hundreds of years.
“India and Pakistan only became independent states in 1947, when the British decided to end their 200-year-long rule in the Indian subcontinent and to divide it into two separate nations. Before that, the area was divided into several smaller kingdoms.”
That is Trump’s grasp on India’s history which he flaunts on his sleeve like a badge of honour little knowing that the Indian cobra knows more Indian history than Trump and his adult children know about their ancestors in the Old World from where Trump’s parents migrated to the United States. But Trump lives in the cocoon of his closed mind and wants to close the chapter on his presidential career with the feeling he is the No.1 POTUS of all time, so beware!
What to make of such a POTUS other than rue the day President Barack Obama ridiculed Trump at a White House dinner and Trump took it as a challenge and ran for president, tasting success, not once but twice? Now, President Trump is on a bizarre bravado on a quest of his own twisted mind, not caring which country is falling by the wayside, among them India.
August 27, Trump’s 50% tariff cap came into force and India cannot do anything other than accept it as a fait accompli. Trump is hell bent on showing India its place and India in turn is adamant she will tread its own path without hindrance to its growth. Is Prime Minister Modi taking a risk? Should India make the United States an irrevocable enemy? Is it worth all the troubles that have come into play after Trump’s tariff tantrum?
True, it is a gamble, a pause in India’s history and that engineered by this Trump who claims he knows Indian history like he knows the back of his hand.
“I said, I don’t want to make a trade deal with you…You guys are going to end up in a nuclear war…I said, call me back tomorrow, but we’re not going to do any deals with you, or we’re going to put tariffs on you that are so high, your head’s going to spin… Within about five hours, it was done…Now maybe it starts again. I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I’ll stop it if it does. We can’t let these things happen.”
Early this week Trump claimed he ‘stopped seven wars around the world, including the one between India and Pakistan. He told the media that of them four were stopped because of his tariffs on countries involved in the conflicts.”I had tariffs and trade, and I was able to say, ‘If you go fight and want to kill everybody, that is okay, but I am going to charge you each a 100% tariff when you trade with us. They all gave up. I have stopped all of these wars. A big one would have been India and Pakistan…”
Trump said the India-Pakistan war was going to be of the next level, a nuclear war! “Well, there’s no more war going on. I used that on numerous occasions. I used trade and whatever I had to use.” India doesn’t believe Trump one little bit, anybody who can sit with the jihadi general Asim Munir and polish off a jumbo hamburger with relish talking of trade, tariffs, nukes and cryptocurrency isn’t worth listening to. Where President Trump is gonna take the world to is for the future to tell. As for now, blame it all on President Barack Obama who shouldn’t have ridiculed Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner. (IPA Service)
