Trump in Indian Media

Aroon Purie, editor of India Today, thinks that Trump owes his victory to such issues as price rise, housing crisis, influx of immigrants, and the conservative rebellion against elite wokeism. Trump presidency portends populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism, says Purie quoting Condoleeza Rice. The world may not be a happier place with Trump leading America.

“What is the world according to Trump?” India Today’s senior journalist Raj Chengappa asks. His answer: “… it is ensuring America’s interests first with those of every other nation coming a very distant second.” Trump thinks that hitherto the other nations were eating America’s lunch. The allusion is not only to the immigrants but also to America “paying everyone else’s bills to maintain the global order.” Though Trump would like to play a key role in bringing the two wars [Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza] to an end, he will not do anything that will involve a price tag that the US has to pay for.

Chengappa worries that Trump’s protectionism may mark “the beginning of the end of globalisation.” It can adversely affect Indians who are one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the US; they represent about 6% of the overall immigrant population. Trump’s policies on migrants aren’t quite friendly or generous. He is likely to restrict migration stringently.

Though Trump may call Modi his “true friend,” he is likely to impose a 10% rise in tariffs on Indian exports to the US, says Chengappa. But the journalist does give due weightage to the camaraderie shared by Trump and Modi. Moreover, the entry of Usha Vance as the wife of VP-elect J D Vance may help India to some extent. For the world history, however, the “predictably unpredictable” Trump may mean some big turning points.

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Outlook brought Donald Trump and Kamala Harris together on the cover of its pre-election issue labelling one as ‘insanity’ and the other as ‘inertia.’

Trump enjoys the support of a lot of Americans including the Blacks, says Outlook, because the economy did better under Trump. These people now want Trump to bring jobs back to America from China and other places.

Kamala Harris’s centrist positions have left her vulnerable to attacks from all sides, says Outlook. She is too liberal for conservatives and too cautious for progressives. Her views on the two wars, especially the Israeli one, make people view her as “a figurehead for an increasingly militarised and neoliberal political order.”

Outlook concludes its articles on the US election with this prediction: “Trump’s presidency might mean the end of the road for millions of undocumented immigrants in America and the stifling of the press and free speech. It would mean a deal with Putin over Ukraine effectively letting Russian tanks roll over more of the country. It would mean a question mark over the future of NATO and probably a never-ending war in the Middle East, which is looking to spiral out of control. Trump’s America means making a nation great by closing it off to the world. Another Trump presidency will change America – forever.”

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S Prasannarajan of the unabashedly right-wing magazine, Open, titled his column this time: Angry America Recasts the Redeemer Cult. According to this journalist, Trump, America’s Redeemer, won because he rebranded the American dream [MAGA: Make America Great Again], led a class war on behalf of the “natives” against the snobbish elites, and successfully converted patriotism into a virtue in a world “radicalised by doctrinaire identity politics.”

M J Akbar, another columnist of Open, mocks Kamala Harris as “a protégé of the elitist monarchs of Washington DC, King Barack and Queen Michelle Obama.” A few paragraphs down, Akbar says that “Harris was never elected by her party, as is the American way. She was anointed by the Obamas and party hegemons like Nancy Pelosi on the assumption that anyone could defeat the dustbin candidate.” Akbar goes to the extent of implying that Harris would have been just a puppet in the hands of the Obamas. For Akbar, Trump is a wealthy version of Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean whose good intentions and efforts to reform were never considered by the media and the elites of America and instead was pursued mercilessly and villainised unfairly.

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Let me end this with a joke offered by ChatGPT.