Modi ensures Trump's fiction won't go uncontested anymore

NEW DELHIi: It needed to be said and many, not just his supporters, were waiting for him to state it for over a month now. Yet, many were surprised by the bluntness with which Prime Minister Narendra Modi called US President Donald Trump out over his claim about having brokered the suspension of hostilities with Pakistan on May 10.

The 35-minute conversation, shorn of diplomatese, amounted to Modi telling Trump two things: first, that his incessant statements about having played the peacemaker between India and Pakistan was a fiction and; second, that India did not need him to sort out its business with Pakistan.

Put in short, "Mere angne mein tumhara kya kaam."

Other leaders; for instance, Mark Carney after his election as PM of Canada, have also sought to push back at Trump's fanciful claims. Even South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had managed to land a nasty "I don't have a plane to give you" punch - a reference to speculation that Trump cosied up to the Emir of Qatar because he plied him with gifts like a luxury jet and a golf course deal - before folding up in the face of Trump's baseless claim about the genocide of white farmers. But if they tip-toed around Trump's irascible temper, Modi, going by foreign secretary Vikram Misri's account, forcefully refuted the president's repeated assertions about having leveraged the prospect of a trade deal to get India and Pakistan to agree to stop firing missiles at each other. This was also a refutation of the Congress's "surrender Narender" jibe.

"The PM made it plain that India and the US did not discuss the trade deal or intervention at any level (during the confrontation with Pakistan)," Misri said.

"India has never accepted mediation nor would it ever accept it. We have complete political unanimity on this," the PM was quoted as telling Trump who had, importantly, initiated the conversation.

Modi also said that India agreed to ceasefire solely because Pakistan, with nine of its strategically crucial air bases damaged on May 10, sued for peace, while also underlining that as part of its 'new normal' vis-a-vis Islamabad, India would consider the Pakistan army to be a legitimate target for retaliation against any future terror attack.

Trump was not expected to stop. He never ceased claiming that he won the 2020 elections and has only now begun to modify his boast that he can get both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to settle for peace. And so, he faithfully repeated his claim on Wednesday evening. Then, there is also the issue of Trump's family and friends - Zachary Witkoff and Gentry Beach - cutting crypto business deals in Pakistan with the help of Munir, his guest for lunch at the White House on Wednesday.

This is not a trivial issue, considering that Trump, as per his latest financial disclosure, made more than $600 million in income from crypto, golf clubs and licensing.

But Modi's plainspeak and his bold decision to get Misri to share it all with the world will ensure that Trump's brag about stopping a nuclear confrontation will not be uncontested any more. The army of fact checkers working on Trump would, of course, grab it.

Quite exciting stuff in itself, it left many to imagine what would have unfolded if Modi and Trump had met on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada. The meeting could not happen because the US president suddenly decided to deal with the spiralling Israel-Iran confrontation. But the decision of Modi, who accepted a late invite for the high-profile get-together, to confront Trump with facts and disclose it all to the world, shows that he was raring for an opportunity to set the record straight.


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