Donald Trump gushed over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the most cringeworthy way possible on Wednesday, describing the leader as “the nicest-looking guy” and then attempting to impersonate him.
The elderly president went there at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, during his tour of East Asia. He was bragging again that he single-handedly brought a swift end the four-day armed conflict between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan earlier this year by allegedly threatening both nations with 250 percent tariffs.
Indian officials have publicly rejected Trump’s repeated claims that he mediated the ceasefire. Sources told Bloomberg that Modi skipped the entire summit in Malaysia this week because Indian officials were worried Trump would once again repeat his self-proclaimed role in ending the conflict. They probably didn’t anticipate the accent.
“I’ll tell you what, Prime Minister Modi is the nicest looking guy,” Trump said, adding Modi looked like someone “you’d like to have as your father.”
But then 79-year-old president pivoted and said, “he’s a killer.”
“He’s tough as hell,” Trump said, before launching into a Modi impersonation, complete with what sounded like an attempt at an Indian accent: “No, we will fight!”
“I said, ‘Whoa, is that the same man that I know?’” Trump told the room.
Trump then took credit again for ending the escalating crisis, a claim disputed by officials in New Delhi. He said it wouldn’t have been resolved “if it wasn’t for the tariffs.”
“After a little while, and they’re good people, and after literally two days they called up, and they said we understand, and they stopped fighting—isn’t that amazing?”
He then took a jab at his predecessor, President Joe Biden.
“You think Biden would have than that? I don’t think so. Most people wouldn’t have thought of it, but you know,” Trump went on, as the audience erupted in applause.
“I said I was going to put 250 percent tariffs on each country, which means that you’ll never do business… that’s a nice way of saying we don’t want to do business with you… and they understood that and within 48 hours we had no war,” Trump added.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
The spiralling crisis between India and Pakistan erupted after a brutal assault at a tourist spot in the town of Pahalgam in Indian-controlled Kashmir in April left at least 26 tourists dead and 17 more wounded.
