The headline at the Maddowblog says it all: “Trump forgets a key rule: don't make up discussions with real people”:
At a White House event yesterday, a reporter asked Donald Trump about his concerns regarding border tensions between India and China. The president briefly reflected on his belief that "they like me in India," and his affection for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, before answering the question.
"They have a big conflict going with India and China. Two countries with 1.4 billion people. Two countries with very powerful militaries. And India is not happy, and probably China is not happy. But I can tell you, I did speak to Prime Minister Modi. He's not -- he's not in a good mood about what's going on with China."
Reuters reported this morning that this conversation apparently did not occur in reality.
“I can tell you…” is probably a tell that he’s about to lie, because where it did occur is exclusively inside trump’s head. Unfortunately for him, the Indian government isn’t OK with trump making up a *nonversation* about the conflict along India’s border with China and its supposed interest in having trump mediate between the two nuclear powers:
The government on Friday forcefully rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that he had spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China, or that the two leaders spoke at all.
Government sources said India would not accept Mr. Trump’s offer to mediate on the stand-off at the LAC, and this was conveyed by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to his American counterpart on Friday.
[…] Government officials told The Hindu that they were taken by surprise by the U.S. President’s comments, particularly his reference to Mr. Modi’s “mood” when Mr. Trump claimed to have spoken to him.
For the record, Modi and trump last spoke on April 4:
The comments followed a Twitter post the previous day in which Trump said the United States had told India and China that it was ready to arbitrate their “raging border dispute”, the first time he has thrown himself into India-China diplomacy.
But Indian officials expressed surprise at Trump’s latest remarks.
“There has been no recent contact between PM Modi and President Trump,” a government source said. “The last conversation between them was on April 4, on the subject of hydroxychloroquine.”
Yeah, in the hydroxychloroquine discussion (which did include Modi!), trump threatened Modi with retaliation if India didn’t relax its ban on exports of HCQ, a threat that the Indian government kept out of their readout of the call but that trump, in typical strongman-wannabe fashion, was happy to share:
In its readout of the call of the same day, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) made no mention of hydroxychloroquine, noting instead that the two leaders had spoken about the pandemic, its impact on the global economy, and even on the “significance of practices such as Yoga and Ayurveda” during these times. However, a few hours later, Mr. Trump revealed to the press that the reason for his call was to request the PM to relax India’s export ban on HCQ, which the Directorate General on Foreign Trade had strengthened only a day before that.
Even as India reconsidered its decision, Mr. Trump spoke again, this time appearing to threaten New Delhi if it did not release the drug to the U.S.
“If [PM Modi] doesn’t allow it [HCQ] to come out, that would be OK, but of course there may be retaliation,” Mr. Trump said, adding insult to his earlier indiscretion. Once the government lifted its ban, as it did not just for the U.S., but for more than a hundred other countries, Mr. Trump showered India and PM Modi with praise. The impression he left by revealing his conversation with the PM was that the U.S. had browbeaten the Indian government into ensuring HCQ supplies.
The article, titled “Trump’s gaffe on call with PM Modi is not a first, but a pattern,” goes on to document another instance of trump inflating crowd size, as well as recount the time trump tried to insert himself as “mediator” in India’s conflict with Pakistan. The Maddowblog piece linked above also picked up on this previous fabrication:
Last summer, Trump welcomed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to the Oval Office, and the American president was asked about possibly playing a diplomatic role in Kashmir. Trump told a curious story about Modi personally inviting him to help oversee negotiations.
"I was with Prime Minister Modi two weeks ago, and we talked about this subject," the Republican asserted. "And he actually said, 'Would you like to be a mediator or arbitrator?' I said, 'Where?' He said, 'Kashmir.'" Trump went on to say that Modi "asked" him to help resolve the conflict.
[…] Soon after, officials in India delicately made clear that Trump's tale wasn't even close to being true.
But trump may not fabricate discussions only with foreign leaders, depending on who you believe in a trump v mcconnell he-said-he-said:
Talking to reporters, Trump described a conversation with the Republicans’ Senate leader about the controversy. After the GOP lawmaker read the official call summary, Trump said McConnell told him, “That was the most innocent phone call that I’ve read.”
Even at the time, it wasn’t an especially notable development. After all, “GOP leader sides with GOP president” is an inherently boring story. Yesterday, however, it took an interesting turn when McConnell told reporters that, despite Trump’s claim, he’s never discussed the Zelensky call with him. Politico reported:
“We’ve not had any conversations on that subject,” McConnell told reporters. […]
McConnell was asked Tuesday whether the president was lying when he made that statement. The GOP leader replied: “You’ll have to ask him. I don’t recall any conversations with the president about that phone call.”
There are a couple of angles to this that are worth keeping in mind. The first is the fact that McConnell was willing yesterday to publicly contradict his party’s president in a way that made Trump look bad. It would’ve been easy for McConnell to harmlessly go along with Trump’s recent claim – whether the two chatted about the Zelensky call is of minor significance – but the Kentucky Republican wanted everyone to know that what the president said wasn’t true.
There are several terms that leap to mind: gobsmacked. WTF. Ridiculous. Infuriating. Frustrating. But here’s one to focus on: scary. It’s scary that trump “repeats” words that were never spoken to him. It’s scarier that we can’t know whether he really believes what he says, so we can’t tell whether he’s lying or delusional. It’s even scarier that he doesn’t seem to know that not everyone’s going to cover his ass over his fabrications. Not even Mitch McConnell.