After lauding India a month ago for “doing great”, Donald Trump changed tack on Sunday, alleging that countries like China, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam and India were all taking away American jobs and vowing to bring them back if he made it to the White House.
It is perhaps the first time that the controversial Republican front-runner has made an adverse reference to India in the course of his aggressive campaign, lumping it with countries like China, Mexico and Japan that have been his pet targets right from the time he jumped into the presidential fray last June. Speaking to CNN after his victory in the South Carolina primary, Trump held forth on his growing appeal among African-Americans, commenting: “You are seeing the stories where African-American leaders are saying, “My people really like Trump”, because I am going to bring jobs back from China, from Mexico, Japan and Vietnam and India...and all these places that are taking our jobs and I’m going to bring back jobs.”
It was not clear what provoked Trump to make a public reference to India at this point, leaving one wondering if it had anything to do with South Carolina’s Indian-American Governor Nikki Haley’s recent endorsement of Senator Marco Rubio for the Republican presidential nomination.
In an earlier interview last month, also to CNN, the billionaire businessman had heaped praise on India. While speaking on America’s decline and the rise of China and India, he remarked: “India is doing great. Nobody talks about it. And I have big jobs going up in India. But India is doing great.” In his Sunday interviews, Trump appeared supremely confident about winning the Republican nomination and expecting to face Hillary Clinton -- a face-off which, in his view, will witness the greatest voter turnout in US history. He said he expects to win enough delegates to clinch the nomination well before the Republican convention in July. Dismissing speculation that it could turn out to be a “brokered convention” to resolve the nomination issue, Trump said he would be winning States such as New York and Michigan that are seldom in Republican play.
In a new development, Trump on Sunday appeared to begin training his guns on Rubio as the Senator from Florida, apparently buoyed by Haley’s endorsement, surged in South Carolina to take the No. 2 position, overtaking Ted Cruz.
Trump, in an interview to ABC News, appeared to cast doubts belatedly on Rubio’s eligibility to run for the presidency — something he has been doing for weeks in respect of Canada-born Cruz. Rubio’s parents may have migrated to the US from Cuba, but he himself was born on in Miami. As such, there can be no questions about his eligibility, Rubio said in a prompt retort, saying the Trump remark was just the latest in a line of “outrageous” comments to attract media attention.
When pressed on the issue, Trump told the network that he had just retweeted something he saw on Twitter regarding Rubio’s eligibility. “I’ve never looked at it,” he said, yet noting: “let people make their own determination.” Saying he has 14 million followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, Trump commented: “I retweet things and we start dialogue and it’s very interesting.”
Hitting back hard on Trump’s insinuations, Rubio told the same network later: “look, this is a pattern. This is a game he (Trump) plays. He says something that’s edgy and outrageous and then the media flocks and covers that and then no one else can get any coverage on anything else.”