Did Trump give $21 million to his 'friend' PM Modi after all?

"And $21 million going to my friend Prime Minister Modi in India for voter turnout. We're giving 21 million for voter turnout in India. What about us? I want voter turnout too."

Thus spake US President Donald Trump on Saturday, the third straight day of his claim that $21 million was diverted to India through the now embattled USAID for 'voter turnout'. This, despite an Indian Express report published yesterday, 21 February, demonstrating how the funds went not to New Delhi but to Dhaka, that too in 2022. For the geographically challenged US President — whose relationship with the truth may also often be tenuous — the two could well be the same.

The BJP-led Indian government went to town about Trump's claim initially, with the government on Friday saying the revelations about the USAID funding "for certain activities in the country are deeply troubling" and had caused concerns about foreign interference in India's internal affairs.

BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya predictably branded the Indian Express report as 'fake', and today, actually posted the video of Trump doubling down on his claim with the text: "For the third day in a row, US President Donald Trump reiterates his claim about USAID funding efforts to promote voter turnout in India. He says, 'We’re giving $21 million for voter turnout in India. What about us? I want voter turnout too'."

Note the complete omission of the words 'to my friend Prime Minister Modi', even as the video itself clearly shows Trump saying them. The saffron brigade follows Malviya's cue, and resumes its harping on the IE story being fake, without a shred of evidence to support either their claim or Trump's.

Sharing the IE report on X yesterday, Congress Rajya Sabha MP and general-secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh wrote, "The lie was first told in Washington. The lie was then exaggerated by the BJP's lie army. The lie was fabricated for debate on Godi media. Now the lie has been completely exposed. Will the liars apologise?"

The other interesting aspect to the BJP's reaction, and that of its supporters, is the assumption that when Trump says 'my friend PM Modi', he actually means 'Modi's India', not Modi per se. Plenty of social media comments bear this out, including those under Malviya's own post.

Of course, the Indian government is yet to react to Trump's latest claim involving Modi. However, one can only assume that it will probe deeper to see why Trump also said the following: "I have a lot of respect for India. I have a lot of respect for the prime minister. He just left, as you know, two days ago. But we're giving USD 21 million for voter turnout. It's voter turnout in India. What about, like, voter turnout here? Oh, we've done that, I guess. We did USD 500 million, didn't we? It's called the lockboxes.”

Trump has now added the figure of a $29 million grant to some entity in Bangladesh 'to strengthen the political landscape' to his list of alleged recipients of American generosity, and as usual, has not explained the source of his information. We, one assumes, are just supposed to take his word for it.

The fact that Trump's claim about USAID funding seems to slightly change each time he makes it appears not to have caught anyone's attention. When he first mentioned the $21 million to India, he said, "21 million dollars in voter turnout — why do we need to spend 21 million for voter turnout in India? I guess they were trying to get somebody else elected. We have got to tell the Indian Government..."

The language has shifted from the unspecified 'they' to 'my friend PM Modi'. If that doesn't show the saffron ecosystem — which once accepted CIA funding to overthrow the Nehru government — how dodgy the entire claim is, nothing will.