Roving Periscope: Livid, Trump clashes with ‘friend’ India, embraces frenemy Pakistan!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: His problem is that nobody—neither on Earth nor in the rest of the Universe—now takes his Commandments seriously.
Why? On January 24, 2021, for example, The Washington Post fact-checked, compiled, and found that Donald Trump had, during his first US Presidency (2017-20), lied more than 30,000 times!
“By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency—averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day. What is especially striking is how the tsunami of untruths kept rising the longer he served as president and became increasingly unmoored from the truth.
“Trump averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 claims a day in his second year, 22 claims a day in this third year—and 39 claims a day in his final year. Put another way, it took him 27 months to reach 10,000 claims and an additional 14 months to reach 20,000. He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later.”
And he doesn’t listen to sage advices—despite Time magazine declaring him “Man of the Ear” in 2024 when he surfaced with a bandaged ear after a bullet scraped him.
Trust Trump to back out any moment. Financial Times journalist Robert Armstrong, in a May 2 article, coined a new phrase, “Trump Always Chickens Out” (TACO), to describe the man who returned to the White House on January 20 on the back of a slogan, Make America Great Again (MAGA). Its TACO versus MAGA in public discourse all over the USA.
But Trump, 79, like any old man, is livid if anybody contradicts his claims.
After his nearly 30 boasts that he arranged a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May during the Operation Sindoor, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Wednesday clarified that there was no phone call between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump between April 22, the day the Pahalgam terror attack took place, and June 16.
“I want to tell them (Opposition), woh kaan kholke sun le… (listen carefully) From April 22 to June 16, where wasn’t one phone call between President Trump and PM Modi,” Dr. Jaishankar said in the Rajya Sabha, pointing at Congress MP Jairam Ramesh and others who are echoing the claims of Washington and Islamabad.
New Delhi’s announcement subtly but effectively put Trump on the mat.
That explains why a furiously angry Trump rushed to impose a 25 percent tariff and an additional penalty on imports from India from August 1 for buying Russian oil—which, Europe also bought, indirectly, from India! This when the Indo-US bilateral negotiations are still on, and the two countries’ delegation are expected to meet on August 25 for a ‘mini-deal.’
India took Trump’s tariffs on the chin. Even the stock markets did not panic. The External Affairs Ministry “noted” the development, said India would look after India’s own interests. Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, who is leading India’s delegation to the US on the trade deals issue, calmly told Parliament on Thursday that India will continue to make efforts to emerge as the world’s third largest economy in the next few years.
To further pressurize India on Wednesday itself, Trump, who infamously hosted Pakistan’s “Failed Marshal” Asim Munir at the White House on June 22 as Islamabad’s de facto supreme leader, also announced a trade deal with a nearly bankrupt and failed economy, whose only exports to the world are terrorists, donkeys and monkeys.
“We have just concluded a Deal with the Country of Pakistan, whereby Pakistan and the United States will work together on developing their massive Oil Reserves. We are in the process of choosing the Oil Company that will lead this Partnership. Who knows, maybe they’ll be selling Oil to India some day!” the US President said in a post on Truth Social, the social media performs he owns and uses exclusively for himself.
The White House, he said, has been “very busy” working on trade deals, and he will be meeting with the South Korean trade delegation.
“Likewise, other Countries are making offers for a Tariff reduction. All of this will help reduce our Trade Deficit in a very major way. A full report will be released at the appropriate time,” he said.
On Thursday, Trump again attacked India and Russia, who have both refused to toe his line.
“I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care,” he said.
“We have done very little business with India, their tariffs are too high, among the highest in the world,” he added.
Trust him, however. TACO….He has earned this dubious distinction painstakingly over several decades.
