Fake Quote on India-China Relations Attributed to Trump Viral as Real

The quote is fabricated. There is no evidence of Trump making this statement.

A post carrying a quote has been attributed to the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, about the growing 'closeness' between India and China, has gone viral on social media platforms.

What did the quote say?:

"Ok India, you don’t agree I made a ceasefire with Pakistan, fine. But you can't deny I gave you better relations with China. You were hostile for decades, decades! My big, beautiful tariffs, the best tariffs by the way, brought peace. Nobody could do it, only me. Nominate me for the Nobel, at least for this. Come on, man. Please. Thank you for your attention to this matter (sic)."

(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is the claim true?: No, the claim is false.

• This is a satirical post attributed to Trump following the massive tariffs on India and the latter's growing relations with China.

What we found: At first, we ran a relevant keyword search to find whether President Trump said such a statement or not.

• However, we did not find any credible reports to prove whether the US president had spoken regarding this.

• This search led us to a BBC report from 2 September which noted a recent statement on the tariffs against India where he criticised the India-US trade relationship as "totally one sided," imposing 50% tariffs on Indian goods, including a 25% penalty related to India's Russian oil purchases.

• These tariffs were denounced by New Delhi as "unfair" and emphasised its energy needs and economic sovereignty, with rising tensions pushing diplomatic ties to a new low even as PM Modi met with Chinese and Russian leaders at the SCO summit.

• However, there was no mention about Trump speaking about USA 'giving' better relations to India than China.

• Team WebQoof, then, ran a Google reverse image search on the image and were led to the source of Trump's image to November 2019 when he spoke during an event on healthcare prices in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

• The image was included in a report by NBC News from 2019 and was attributed to the Associated Press.

• We checked the AP photo archives website and found these from 2019.

Conclusion: A fake quote about Trump criticising India and China's relations has gone viral as a real statement.

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