The Donald's Trumpcard -- North Korea!

WASHINGTON: In preparing for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s upcoming visit to the United States, aides to the PM reached out to contacts last month seeking to identify key players in the next administration in Washington DC that New Delhi could reach out to in a bipartisan way.

From most accounts, the list of Hillary Clinton’s putative A-team was easy enough to draw up, with familiar names such as John Podesta, James Steinberg, and Jake Sullivan making the cut. Drawing up a list of Trump advisors proved a formidable task. By his own admission, he has none; he is his own advisor and listens mostly to himself.

Foreign leaders and governments across the world heading to the US over the next several months as the Obama administration winds down are facing the same problem as they seek to build early bridges with the next Washington dispensation. Not so North Korea, which on Wednesday, fervidly backed the maverick billionaire, calling him ''wise politician'' and a ''far-sighted presidential candidate,'' even as it adopted Trump’s playbook by trashing Hillary Clinton as dull.

''The president that US citizens must vote for is not that dull Hillary … but Trump, who spoke of holding direct conversation with North Korea,'' urged an editorial in a state-run newspaper, declaring that ''There are many positive aspects to Trump’s ‘inflammatory policies’''

Pyongyang's florid language is the cause of much mirth on the political comedy circuit, and the latest pitch for Trump is a godsend for late-night comedians. Another prominent supporter of Trump who has been the butt of jokes: Russia's Putin, who is much despised in Washington DC now.

But beyond the humour, Trump’s proposal to hold direct talks with North Korea’s wacko leader, while threatening to cut off ties with the United Kingdom, one of Washington’s oldest and most trusted allies, and downgrade other allies, is indicative of the kind of turmoil he is causing in many world capitals. Even President Obama has pitched in, worrying about the signal Trump is sending to the rest of the world. The more trenchant Trump critics in the U.S believe he is as erratic as North Korea’s Kim, amid a Manichean view of the Trump phenomenon.

In one dark analysis, an American psychologist has theorized that Trump is gaining ground in the U.S because he is constantly reminding people that they are going to die, and his research shows that people who are thinking about death are more likely to say they support him.

Trump reminders about death aren’t explicit, and they probably aren’t part of an intentional strategy. All the same, much of Trump’s rhetoric on issues such as terrorism and immigration could have the effect of bringing his viewers’ omnipresent fear of death closer to their conscious minds, according to Sheldon Solomon, a psychologist at Skidmore College.

Subjects in Solomon’s study who were prompted to talk about their own death later rated their support for Trump 1.66 points higher on a five-point scale than those who were prompted to talk about pain generally. ''I’m not suggesting that any of this is calculated, but almost everything that he does is demonstrably effective for raising these non-conscious, existential concerns that in turn make his kind of candidacy all the more alluring,'' Solomon told in Washington Post, which first reported the study.

Such is the effect Trump is having on the US national consciousness and its politics that people are starting to use unusual language and tactics with reference to him. On Tuesday, the Senate Republican Majority leader Mitch McConnell said he would support Trump if the presidential candidate became more boring.

Referring to Trump’s casting aside of a prepared speech last month because it was ''boring,'' McConnell said, ''Put me down in favor of boring, put me down in favor of using a script more often… In order to get from where you are to the White House, you need more boring.''

But with North Korea pitching into the US elections, things are only bound to get more exciting.