Last night the United States President Donald Trump stirred up a controversy by saying that Prime Minister Modi has asked him to mediate between India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue. However, the Ministry of External Affairs promptly issued clarification that India has not sought any such help.
However, people who would not let facts get in the way of narrative continued to spread the falsehood on the same. A journalist with The News Minute was waiting for the official response, over eight hours after an official response.
Actually Trump didn’t offer, he says @narendramodi asked. Pretty serious given his bunch never stops blaming Nehru for taking Kashmir to the UN. So did Modi really ask, or is Trump BSing? Nation wants to know, officially. https://t.co/Vc2HSAkIEW
— Ramanathan S (@madarassi) July 23, 2019
Because, why would India not give an official response to something as serious as this.
My guess is that we are going to see some no-name quotes in media reports to diffuse the situation and official silence. If they don’t respond officially what are we going to do, vote them out? Heheh
— Ramanathan S (@madarassi) July 23, 2019
Ramanathan’s tweet was also retweeted by The Wire’s journalist Rohini Singh. Singh had spread this falsehood despite having retweeting MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar’s tweet rejecting Trump’s claims earlier. Singh knew India’s official response. However, instead of informing her colleague Ramanathan, who ‘wasn’t following’ the updates, she chose to spread the falsehood.
And @MEAIndia clarifies. Trump seems to have made up an entire conversation with Modi. Pretty incredible even by Trump’s standards! https://t.co/JuGgogqJHw
— Rohini Singh (@rohini_sgh) July 22, 2019
Guess this is why they put up the disclaimer, “RTs aren’t endorsements”. Former NDTV journalist, who generally gets excited when a BJP leader falls ill, was so taken by Trump’s statement that she watched it on loop.
How many times have you seen this video? India just got the real Trump treatment. How will we tell him to back off? https://t.co/qDDwLLHyiO
— sunetra choudhury (@sunetrac) July 23, 2019
Riding on the same bandwagon is also Congress communication in-charge, Randeep Surjewala.
Now, ‘Whitehouse’ puts up @POTUS assertion in ‘black & white’ that PM Modi asked him to ‘mediate on Kashmir’!
When will our PM ‘wake up’ & call the bluff if President Trump is lying?
Or
Did PM Modi ask @POTUS to mediate?https://t.co/pFV8gnl6YQ
— Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) July 23, 2019
At the stroke of midnight, when Surjewala slept, MEA was awake and calling the bluff of POTUS.
Last night, President of USA Donald Trump had claimed that PM Narendra Modi had requested him to mediate on the long-standing Kashmir dispute. He had made this comment while addressing a joint press conference with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in Washington DC. Within an hour, the MEA spokesperson said that no such request thas been made by PM Narendra Modi to the US President.
It has been India’s longstanding position that Kashmir is a bilateral issue and no third party intervention is welcome. Pakistan has been trying to bring the issue to the international level, have tried to bring various countries and UN as mediators, but India has been successfully resisting that attempt.
It may be noted that although president Trump claimed about Modi requesting him to mediate on Kashmir, in the official statement issued by White House on Imran Khan’s visit, it was not mentioned. The statement does not even mention Kashmir. Therefore it can be presumed PM Modi has not made any such request with the president, and he may have misunderstood something Modi said during their meeting at the G-20 summit in Japan last month.
