Donald Trump has often been the butt of all jokes. He has funny hair and makes the most uninformed statements more often than his country indulges in rampant racial discrimination against the African-American population, and that says a lot. Yesterday, he firmly planted his foot in his mouth when he proclaimed, while sitting with Imran ‘Taliban’ Khan that Prime Minister Modi had met him a couple of weeks ago and requested him to mediate in the Kashmir issue.
The Ministry of External Affairs issued a clarification within the hour basically calling Trump a liar, in not so many words. The MEA denied that any such request had been extended by PM Modi to Donald Trump. The same position was reiterated in a rather vociferous manner by EAM S Jaishankar in the Rajya Sabha.
#WATCH: EAM S Jaishankar speaks in Rajya Sabha over the statement of US President Donald Trump that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to mediate in Kashmir issue. He says, “I would like to categorically assure the House that no such request has been made by PM Modi…” pic.twitter.com/gWjAa32bMO
— ANI (@ANI) July 23, 2019
The counter was vehement and categorical. The only thing Trump did was end up making himself look exceedingly foolish and give the desperate Indian opposition some fodder to grandstand, uselessly, I might add, for a day or two.
Had President Donald Trump actually spent some time familiarising himself with world issues before ‘you know.. like.. saying stuff’, he would have ‘you know.. like.. totally not made a fool of himself’.
India’s stand has been rather categorical as far as the Kashmir issue is concerned. No world leader, except someone with his hair on fire, would even begin to misinterpret what India stands for. After the Jawaharlal Nehru gaffe when he approached the UN and ended up losing a part of Kashmir to Pakistan occupation, India has maintained that Kashmir is a bilateral issue and that there is no space for mediation by any third party.
In fact, Prime Minister Modi has often been accused of taking a rather muscular stand when it comes to Pakistan and the Kashmir issue. He suspended dialogues with Pakistan till the state stops using terror as a policy against India and in fact, has even ensured that the Kashmir separatists and Hurriyat are not made stakeholders in the Kashmir problem.
For Donald Trump to lie about something so elementary as India’s stand on Kashmir, only goes to show how terribly ignorant the President truly is.
When one tries to reason why America might want to embarrass India, one certainly recalls how the USA was miffed with India’s decision to purchase S-400s from Russia. The USA had ‘warned’ that if India chooses to purchase S400s from Russia, one of their most sophisticated long-range surface-to-air defence system, the defence ties between India and the USA would be affected. The USA was of the opinion that India would be put in the dog-house by the USA because of the CAATSA sanctions in place.
But even if take that nuance of foreign relations into consideration, for the President of the United States to lie so blatantly that only a desperate Indian opposition ends up believing him, is only a mirror into his ignorant soul.
This is not the first time that Donald Trump has revealed how clueless he is about world affairs.
Recently, he had lauded Pakistan’s move to ‘arrest’ the ‘so-called’ mastermind of 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Firstly, one would like to see the American people’s reaction if Osama Bin Laden was called the ‘so-called’ mastermind of 9/11. Besides, his own administration them came out to caution him against taking Pakistan on face value as far as the ‘arrest’ was concerned.
Then, there was a video where Donald Trump looked clueless while talking to a Yazidi Human Rights Activist and asked why she got her Nobel in the first place.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYUW-1Wg2xs]
This was not all. While a Rohingya man narrated his ordeal to the President, Donald Trump asked him where Rohingya was.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JupktYBCVE]
Several times in the past, Donald Trump has only proven himself to be ignorant. In a massive diplomatic coup, Trump seems to have managed to embarrass himself further while trying really hard to arm-twist and embarrass the Prime Minister of India.
