Howdy, Modi? You have chosen your friend wisely — that is the message that wound its way from, not Texas, but Manhattan on Wednesday in pre-dawn India.
Indicted on 34 felony counts and accused of covering up a potential sex scandal involving a porn star, Trump made an extraordinary appearance at the Criminal Courts Building in Lower Manhattan to face the charges.
The indictment should renew interest in the hosannas Modi sung to a beaming onstage Trump in Texas in 2019, a little over a year before the US presidential elections.
Modi topped up his over-the-top praise by echoing “candidate Trump’s” own sales pitch borrowed from India: “Ab ki baar Trump Sarkar.”
American voters though did not allow Trump to clone Modi’s feat at the hustings.
But Trump’s response to the proceedings in Manhattan suggested he may have been “inspired” by contemporary India more than it was assumed earlier — a revelation that no doubt strengthens immensely Vishwa Guru’s claim to be the shining lode star to the rest of the world.
Of course, the playbook will have several precedents but remember that in the great ice age that preceded 2014, nothing existed.
Playing victim
If the 100 questions on the Adanis have made Modi claim that his rivals have taken out a “supari (contract)” on him, the Trump camp has gone several steps further.
Some allies of Trump have tried to connect his ensnarement in the porn star hush-money case to the persecution of Jesus Christ. “Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today. Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told Right Side Broadcasting on Tuesday. “Jesus — Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government.”
Target institutions
The effort to browbeat the judiciary and former judges who speak out is a work in progress in India, not to mention the election commissioner whose family faced the brunt when he refused to toe the line on the Prime Minister in the 2019 election.
During the Trump hearing, one of the prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Chris Conroy, brought up threatening posts that the former President has made online in past weeks, including writing that “death and destruction” would follow if he were to be charged.
In response, the judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, addressed Trump’s lawyers, telling them, “Please speak to your client and anybody else you need to, and remind them to please refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence or civil unrest.”
After returning to Florida, just hours after Justice Merchan cautioned him against incendiary rhetoric, Trump lashed out at the judge and his family during a meandering rally-style speech before supporters at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach estate. The former President berated Justice Merchan — whom he called “Trump-hating” — and also attacked the judge’s wife.
Trump has repeatedly assailed Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, who is Black, with racist language and made threatening statements reminiscent of his posts in the run-up to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The media
If India has Godi Media, America has The National Enquirer.
Along with the Trump indictment, the prosecutors filed a so-called statement of facts, which is common in complex white-collar cases. The document, which provides something of a road map for the evidence that prosecutors could reveal at trial, details two other hush-money deals involving The National Enquirer, which has longstanding ties to Trump.
The first deal involved a $30,000 payment the tabloid made to a former Trump Tower doorman who claimed to know that Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock. The publication later determined the claim was untrue.
The National Enquirer then made another payment to Karen McDougal, Playboy’s playmate of the year in 1998, who wanted to sell her story of an affair with Trump during the 2016 campaign. She reached a $150,000 agreement with The Enquirer, which bought the rights to her story to suppress it — a practice known as “catch and kill”.
“And now, perhaps fittingly, the first criminal case against Mr. Trump accuses him of lying to cover up a tryst with a porn star: a tabloid indictment for a tabloid President,” The New York Times said on Tuesday.
Documents
This is an inconvenient contrast, not a proud parallel.
One of the unexpected accusations against Trump that popped up when the indictment was unsealed was that he falsified business records.
Bookkeeping fraud is normally a misdemeanour. For it to rise to a felony, prosecutors must show that a defendant intended to commit, aid or conceal a second crime.
But the point is the Americans are willing to ask questions and investigate.
In India, even a question on something as elementary as the Prime Minister’s stated degree is frowned upon.
(The court proceedings and the reporting from the US were sourced from The New York Times News Service.)
