The maverick U.S. President is hyphenating India with Russia
By Sushil Kutty
President Donald Trump is showing his age, 79 going on 80 and it isn’t fine showing. Of course, Trump is an “obnoxious” proper noun and Trump has called India “obnoxious”, which is how an obnoxious person will talk. If Indians are thinking Trump’s a disappointed man, nope. Obnoxious persons are never disappointed. Obnoxious persons pick themselves up and then it’s picking up the pieces.
President Trump on July 30 ordered a stiff 25% tariff across Indian imports, plus a 10% penalty. Trump’s gone bananas. Frustration is the first sign of going bananas, interchangeable with mad-cap crazy and nuts. President Trump realized India wasn’t biting the bait. Trump called India a country worse for wear.
How many of us Indians know Americans, white Americans, have a poor reckoning of the “Hindoo”? It’s been like that for a couple of centuries, from before the American Civil War. Indians were seen as a bunch of no-good diaspora. The Chinese were by far more acceptable.
It made no difference that the Hindoo Indian was peaceful, the Hindoo was linked with black-magic and superstition. But the Hindoo wormed his way into the liberal American system and in the years after India gained freedom, the Indian-American remains entrenched in the American fabric, the most promising immigrants to set foot on American soil.
Today, President Donald Trump’s hatred for Indians is moored to his newfound love for the Pakistani. A Pakistani answering to the name Sajid Tarar, a Pakistani-American, has been giving lessons to Trump on India and Tarar is also the go-between between Trump and “Field Marshal Asim Munir”.
Now you know where Trump’s obnoxiousness for India is coming from. President Trump’s contempt for India has erupted with Trump saying, “They can take their dead economies down together”. Trump hyphenating India and Russia, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is 8the “new normal”.
Trump, for all his billions of dollars, remains a part of the construction industry and the construction crew is perhaps the most invective-laden in this big-wide world. Give construction workers free-rein and their tongues will wag at speeds greater than Agni-5. Trump thought Modi would be a foldable mat around his little-finger. But Trump met resistance and he didn’t like this. Trump is a parody of a white supremacist.
President Trump’s criticism of Russia-India ties and Trump’s rotten conclusion that the ties were “obnoxious” made sense to those who know Trump. It is another matter that Prime Minister Narendra Modi never could get a fix on the real @realDonaldTrump.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seemingly at the beck and call of President Donald Trump. Today, after failing to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, and India refusing to lapse into Trump’s orbit of influence, Trump’s frustration is at its peak, targeting India’s trade ties with Russia.
“I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the World…Likewise, Russia and the USA do almost no business together. Let’s keep it that way, and tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!”
Trump can’t sleep is another symptom he’s battling with, especially after slapping a 25% tariff on Indian imports and penalties for India’s trade and defence ties with Moscow. As for former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, he said ‘X’ -post that Trump was playing “the ultimatum game” with Russia and risking a war with Russia.
Problem is Trump’s ego refuses to desert him and Medvedev provoked him, “Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with (Trump’s) own country.” The 25% tariff on India has alienated India but Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi sounded happy, backing Trump for the latter’s “dead economy” jibe with the remark, “Glad Donald Trump stated a fact”. (IPA Service)
