Arul Louis - - - -
India and Indian Americans appeared to take center stage in Presidential candidate Donald Trump's latest utterances, when he spoke in glowing terms of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him once again "a friend of mine" but who is a "total killer" with the nation's enemies and also declared he would give his former political rival, Indian American Vivek Ramaswamy, a prominent position in his administration if elected president.
“He's great, he's a friend of mine, but on the outside, he looks like he's your father”, yet “he's the nicest, total killer”, Trump said of Modi during a podcast interview.
Explaining the assessment, he said, “We had a couple of occasions where somebody was threatening India. I said, let me help. I'm very good with those people. Let me help”. But Modi turned down the offer saying, “I will do it. I will do it, and I will do anything necessary. We've defeated them for hundreds of years,” Trump said.
While quoting Modi, Trump changed his voice to a tough-guy growl for effect on the podcast show, Flagrant, hosted by two comedians, Aakash Singh, and Andrew Cameron Schulz.
Trump said, “Wow, he was talking about a certain country, yeah, you can probably guess, but I said, 'Whoa, what happened there'”? and left no one in doubt that he meant Pakistan.
The Republican presidential candidate said that at a personal level with Modi “we have a very good relationship. He's the nicest human being”. Trump made the observations when Schulz asked if world leaders were “all sharks"? And if he can "sense the energy immediately”, and how he assesses their personalities. Trump said that not all of them were “sharks”, but gave the example of Modi as one of the tough leaders.
Trump fondly recalled his participation in the “Howdy Modi” event in Houston in 2020. “It was me and him. We filled up the stadium. Was beautiful, like 80,000 people. Was going crazy”, he said.
With his penchant for hyperbole, Trump said that till Modi became prime minister there was instability in India.“Before him … they were replacing them every year. It was very unstable”. In fact, in the decade before Modi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the Congress Party ruled uninterrupted for two terms.
In the show filled with laughter and jokes, Trump said Modi "is the nicest Indian”, and turning to Singh, asked him, “Do you like him or not”?. The US-born Singh, whose family is from Uttar Pradesh, replied noncommittally, “I have family on both sides”.
At a campaign rally later, Trump offered his one-time "nasty" rival Vivek Ramaswamy a position in his administration if elected, putting “him in charge of one of these big monsters” in government.
Trump who took his campaign to Scranton, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of President Joe Biden, on Wednesday said the “smart as hell” Indian-American entrepreneur gave him a tough competition and was “nasty” when they vied for the party nomination.
“He's really smart, and I hope he's going to be involved in our administration”, he said. “We can put him in charge of one of these big monsters[in government] and he'll do a better job than anybody you can think of”.
Ramaswamy, who was a warm-up speaker for Trump’s next rally in nearby Reading, compared him to George Washington, the Father of the Nation, in the style of the former president’s hyperbole.
Trump, who followed, expanded on his earlier remark in Scranton saying that “he's going to be a part of something that's going to be really big”. To cheers from the audience, he added, “I don't want to tell him yet exactly [his position]. We're gonna pick the right [one].”
He said he didn’t want to disclose the job he had in mind because “I don't like talking first. I like to win. We gotta win”.
At his Scranton rally, Trump recalled the fight for the party nomination before Ramaswamy dropped out to support him.“I had to compete with this guy, and I thought it was going to be easy, but it wasn't. He was nasty. He was quick. He's smart as hell. And he knew, he knew things that a lot of people didn't know and didn't understand”, he said.
“He did amazingly well, because he started really as a rookie, right? And he got up and he wiped a lot of very smart politicians off the stage”, Trump said.
“And then one day he came up to me, he goes, ‘You know, I don't think I'm gonna beat you’”, he said.
As an Indian-American Hindu, Ramaswamy poignantly said, “The best days are still yet ahead of us, so we will look our kids in the eye and mean it when we tell them that no matter who you are or where your parents came from, or what your skin color is, that you get ahead in the United States of America with your own hard work, your own commitment, your own dedication”.
Ironically, though, in the current presidential race Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic Party candidate, epitomises that.
Trump and Harris are sparring at the polls’ margin of error, with a 2 per cent lead for her nationally with him ahead by 0.2 percent in Pennsylvania, a key state that could determine the winner.
(The writer is a New York-based Indian journalist and Nonresident Fellow, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi. Views are personal. He can be reached at arulouis@yahoo.com)
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