US President Trump recently reposted an interview with a conservative political commentator, Michael Savage, in which he referred to India and China as “hellhole countries”.
The remark was made in the context of his outright, stated hostility toward birthright citizenship, a principle enshrined in the US Constitution under the auspices of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution. In an 1898 case, the US Supreme Court had upheld this principle, and it had not been challenged until Trump issued an Executive Order on 20 January last year, doing so.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with a several other civil rights groups, are currently challenging the order in the US Supreme Court. It is expected to issue its judgment in late June of this year.
A Familiar Pattern of Inflammatory Rhetoric
Sadly, this is hardly the first inflammatory statement that Trump has made about other nations. For example, during his first term in office, in January 2018, he had referred to various African countries, as well as El Salvador and Haiti, as “shithole countries”.
In the same conversation with a group of Senators from both parties held at the White House, he had lamented that the US was not receiving more immigrants from a country such as Norway. In each case, these intemperate remarks were made when discussing one of his signature campaign issues, namely the question of both legal and illegal immigration to the US.
His most recent remark has not elicited any adverse public reactions from members of his own party. However, this is not especially surprising. They are either in his thrall or are acutely fearful of retribution. Some Democratic lawmakers, born to immigrant parents, have sharply criticised his most recent outburst.
For example, Congressman Ami Bera from California forthrightly stated that this remark was “…offensive, ignorant and beneath the dignity of the office he holds”. Even non-Indian American Congressmen expressed their frustration with Trump’s statement.
Grace Meng, who is a Taiwanese American Democratic Congresswoman from New York, called the remark “disgusting”.
Muted Republican Response
Given the gravity of these remarks as they came from none other than the President of the United States, it is worth examining why he chose to repost them in the first place.
Several possible explanations come to mind. At the outset, impulse control has never been Trump’s strong suit. This tendency was already evident in his first term when he made similar and worse remarks, especially on the issue of illegal immigration. Whatever normative or institutional restraints that had existed during his initial term have now been breached granting him leave to make even more execrable comments.
It should also be noted that he appears oblivious to the sentiments of several key individuals in his administration who are of Indian origin. His presently beleaguered Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, is the son of Indian immigrants. The Deputy Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, is also of Indian origin. And, obviously, his Vice-President’s spouse, Usha Vance, is also of Indian descent.
None of them, for reasons that can only be speculated upon, have expressed any public discomfort with the President’s race-baiting remarks.
Why This Rhetoric Works for Trump
This seeming obsession with immigration, in turn, has at least two related sources. First, it can be surmised that he, along with a slice of the American populace, are distressed about the growing ethnic diversity of the country. In this regard, they share the same fears and anxieties of many on the far-right in Europe.
Second, it is no surprise that resorting to this inapt language and demonising recent immigrants plays well with a segment of the American electorate. Many of them harbor acute resentment toward professionally successful Indian and other non-white immigrant groups. This form of xenophobia, unfortunately, is deeply rooted in American political culture. It has historically come to the fore during times of significant economic disruption and change. Consequently, the current spike in xenophobic sentiments, which Trump is fanning, is in keeping with past trends.
These domestic sources of racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric (as well as the present limited pushback) aside, how is this latest fracas over Trump’s feckless remarks likely to affect relations with India?
For the moment, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Randhir Jaiswal stated that they were “… obviously uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste”.
Probably with a view toward diminishing the political fallout from these unpleasant remarks, the US Embassy in New Delhi issued a statement saying that the President considers India “a great country.”
Fallout for US-India Relations
How the US President’s remarks will affect the tone of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's upcoming visit to New Delhi next month is an open question.
As is well known, US-India relations had taken a bit of a battering with Trump’s imposition of harsh tariffs on New Delhi most likely because of its failure to laud his ostensible role in defusing the post-Pahalgam India-Pakistan crisis.
Subsequently, Islamabad had very adroitly exploited the US-India rift leading to a US-Pakistan rapprochement. Thereafter, in the wake of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, after their initial tactical successes ran aground on the Strait of Hormuz, Islamabad jumped into the fray, sidelining New Delhi.
Secretary Rubio, according to press reports, is not only traveling to India for the Quad’s foreign ministers meeting but also to try and reset US-India relations. Based on his time in the Senate, he is apparently well-disposed toward India.
However, given the Trump administration’s decision to rely on Pakistan’s good offices to help resolve the Iran crisis, coupled with his recent callous remarks about India, the mood in India’s foreign policy establishment cannot be overly welcoming.
Prime Minister Modi’s faith in personal diplomacy and the apparent bonhomie that Trump had displayed toward him in the first term now appear to be entirely superficial and flimsy.
Instead, Trump has resoundingly demonstrated his utterly transactional approach to foreign policy issues even when dealing with otherwise friendly nations. That tendency, which is now more than manifest, cannot contribute to a milieu conducive to a meaningful dialogue.
Between intemperate language and personal whims as characteristic features of his foreign policy, Trump has undermined much of the trust in US-India relations that had been so carefully nurtured on a bipartisan basis over the last two decades or so.
(Sumit Ganguly is a Senior Fellow and directs the Huntington Program on Strengthening US-India Relations at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)