The first example came in mid-May, though it generated very little attention. During Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East, tensions flared between India and Pakistan, though the president boasted that he helped resolve the escalating tensions with a strategy he considered brilliant.
“I said, ‘Come on, we’re going to do a lot of trade with you guys. Let’s stop it. Let’s stop it. If you stop it, we’ll do a trade. If you don’t stop it, we’re not going to do any trade,’” the Republican claimed. “And all of a sudden, they said, ‘I think we’re going to stop.’”
Though Trump seemed quite pleased with himself, India wasted little time in pushing back. As NBC News reported, the Indian government said the American president’s version of events simply wasn’t true, and the conversation that Trump publicly described never actually occurred.
Soon after, while still in the Middle East, Trump acknowledged the tariffs he’d imposed on India, adding that Indian leaders, in response, had offered the United States a deal in which “they’re willing to literally charge us no tariff.”
Once again, as NBC News reported, officials in New Delhi publicly disputed the Republican’s claim.
In the weeks that followed, Trump repeatedly claimed that he deserved international credit for his brilliant diplomatic work. Earlier this week, for example, by way of his social media platform, the American president wrote that he singlehandedly brought “reason, cohesion, and sanity into the talks” with India and Pakistan, which “quickly” led to de-escalation. At a White House event on Wednesday, his claim was even more direct: “I stopped the war between Pakistan and India.”
For the third time in five weeks, India not only offered a different story, it also encouraged Trump to stop saying stuff like this. NBC News reported: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi used his first conversation with President Donald Trump since the early May conflict between India and Pakistan to express his frustration with Trump’s repeated claims that he played a significant role in brokering a ceasefire between the two nuclear-armed countries. … During a Tuesday phone call between the two leaders, Modi ‘clearly conveyed’ to Trump that the U.S. played no role in the mediation between India and Pakistan and denied any discussion of a trade deal, [Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri] said. The report added that India’s strident tone “was most likely due in part to Trump’s decision to host Pakistan’s chief of Army Staff for lunch at the White House,” which was the first time any U.S. president had ever hosted the head of the Pakistani military. During their terms, Barack Obama and Joe Biden invested considerable diplomatic efforts trying to bring India and the United States closer together — Obama was the first sitting American president to ever visit India twice during his term — in part because of the country’s nuclear program, in part to focus on the climate crisis, in part to help shift India further away from Russia and in part as part of a broader geopolitical strategy to counterbalance China. Trump’s strategy, in contrast, appears rooted in repeatedly annoying India, which seems unwise.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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