Trump goes to
India
President Trump departed for India Sunday, for a two day visit that
seems set to draw crowds and controversy. On Monday, he will hold a rally
in a cricket stadium in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, expected to
draw some 120,000 people. Follow
live coverage of Trump's visit from our reporters based in
India and traveling with Trump. In the meantime, here is some coverage
from The Washington Post to set the scene for the trip.
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A woman walks past hoardings featuring the words
'Thank You Mr. And Mrs. Trump' on a route to Motera Stadium in
Ahmedabad, India, on Feb. 23. (T. Narayan/Bloomberg)
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Welcomed with
a wall
The 49-year-old tailor has lived in this western Indian city for his
entire life, but he has never seen anything quite like this.
Ahead of President Trump’s visit to India, workers have descended on
his modest neighborhood, resurfacing roads, laying concrete sidewalks
where none existed, fixing street lamps and painting an overpass with
fresh white paint. On a recent afternoon, they gingerly placed row upon
row of saplings into a barren road divider.
“It’s fantastic,” said Hamir Vaghela, surveying the activity around
him. Trump “should come once every six months.”
Trump arrives Monday for his first visit as president to the world’s
largest democracy, and although he is staying for only 36 hours, the
Indian government is leaving nothing to chance. The iconic Taj Mahal is
being buffed and scrubbed before a sunset visit by Trump and the first
lady. The world’s largest cricket stadium — so new it is not officially
open — will host a rally for up to 120,000 people dubbed “Namaste
Trump,” or “Hello Trump.”
Other preparations are more controversial: In Ahmedabad, municipal
authorities have raised a 6-foot-high, 200-yard-long wall in front of a
slum along a road Trump may take near the airport. The city says the
timing is a coincidence, but residents are not convinced. On earlier VIP
visits, workers put up curtains on the route, they say.
“Now the number one country is coming, so as per the number one
standards, they built the wall,” said Vikram Rathod, 40, a laborer who
lives in the slum. “They have decided that poor people should not be
seen.” — Joanna Slater
Read more: As Trump prepares to visit, a wall rises in India
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Back to
business
When President Trump arrives in India on Monday, it will be his first
visit to the country as an elected official. But as a business executive,
Trump has connections to India that stretch back years.
India is home to the largest
portfolio of Trump real estate projects outside North America,
according to the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., who has made
repeated trips here
in recent years. The ventures include four luxury residential projects
and an office tower, all branded with the Trump name under licensing
deals.
On his last trip to India in 2014, Donald Trump partied with Bollywood
stars and praised the country’s potential. “I don’t consider this as an
emerging market, I think it’s an amazing market,” he said in an interview
with New
Delhi Television.
Since then, two of Trump’s business partners in India have developed
problems of their own: One is accused of massive fraud, while the other
is facing a funding crunch. Both of them have close ties to India’s
ruling Bharatiya Janata Party headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Ahead of Trump’s visit, the president’s business partners were keeping
a low profile. Two of them did not respond to requests for comment, and
two others declined to comment. The Trump Organization did not respond to
specific questions about its Indian ventures, but Trump Jr. said he was
“incredibly proud” of the company’s “continued success in India.” —
Niha Masih and Joanna Slater
Read more: What you need to know about Trump’s business ties in India
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‘Namaste
Trump’
No, the president has not suddenly discovered the meditative glow of a
good yoga session. He has, however, discovered the energizing power of a
good political rally, Indian-style.
President Trump will almost certainly not complete a new U.S.-India
trade deal during his two-day visit. The trophy agreement has been
repeatedly postponed amid trade tensions.
Instead, the centerpiece of the brief trip is a massive rally in
Trump’s honor that his host, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has billed as
“Namaste Trump.” The greeting loosely translates from Sanskrit as, “I bow
to you,” which may appeal to Trump as much as the idea that the gathering
Monday in Ahmedabad is expected to fill, or nearly fill, the world’s
largest cricket stadium. Never mind that the projected stadium capacity
is perhaps 120,000, not “millions,” as Trump has exclaimed, and that it
seems a stretch to estimate that a crowd approaching the population of
New York City will line the streets for his arrival.
Whatever the numbers, Trump will draw a crowd that may be his largest
ever. In addition to bragging rights, he hopes that popularity abroad can
translate to votes back home. Although the Indian American diaspora of
roughly 4.5 million people tends to vote Democratic, Trump has argued
that his pro-business agenda and entrepreneurial background should be a
draw. — Anne Gearan and Seung Min Kim
Read more: Trump’s India trip mixes politics with policy, and offers the
promise of his biggest rally yet
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Talking Points
• A special report
from my colleagues Danielle Paquette and Joby Warrick details how groups
linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, at war with each other in the
Middle East, are working together to take control of territory across a
vast stretch of West Africa as well. The development is sparking fears the regional threat could grow
into a global crisis.
• The novel
coronavirus continued to spread over the weekend. The
Italian government said it has 152 confirmed cases, up from three in a
matter of days. The Chinese government reported 648 new cases across the
country. South Korea raised its national threat level to “red alert”
after cases spiked to 602. And as millions of Israelis are preparing for
national elections next week, concerns of a widening threat from the virus
are growing.
• When President
Vladimir Putin threw open the gates for Russians to propose changes to
the country’s constitution the rewrite frenzy was on —
particularly among nationalists, social conservatives, chauvinists and
militants, who all dream of a Russia even more strident and militaristic,
The Post’s Moscow bureau chief Robyn Dixon writes.
The proposals represent a road map of where Russia has moved under Putin
who ordered the constitutional redo last month as part of an apparent
plan to keep his grip on power after term limits force him out of the
presidency in 2024.
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Top of The Post
By
Colby Itkowitz, Amy Wang and Felicia Sonmez ●
Read
more »
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Viewpoints
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The preview
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A rally marking the second anniversary of the murder
of the investigative reporter Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina
Kusnirova, one week ahead of country's parliamentary election in
Bratislava, Slovakia, on Feb. 21. (David W. Cerny/Reuters)
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Slovakia heads to
the polls Saturday for parliamentary elections, a contest
pitting the forces of old-guard populist nationalism against more liberal
parties. The vote comes around two years after the murder of Slovak
journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova prompted
mass protests and calls for the government to address corruption. The
demonstrations pushed the country’s prime minister to step down and left
it politically divided. A report
from Al Jazeera notes that while the ruling Smer Party may win the
most votes Saturday, the opposition could piece together a coalition.
Meanwhile, amid this battle in the polls, the divisions have opened space
for another political movement in the Eastern European country: The neo-Nazi
head of the far-right People’s Party is currently polling in third
place.
Speaking of elections, in the United States, the presidential
primaries are in full swing, with
South Carolina gearing up to vote on Saturday. One
looming question is whether Democratic presidential contender Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) will hold
his momentum after wins in Nevada and New Hampshire or whether former
vice president Joe Biden will score a victory in the state, which his
campaign has focused on securing.
And on the other side of the Atlantic, arguments in a London courthouse are scheduled to begin Monday over the
U.S. bid to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to stand trial on
espionage charges. — Ruby Mellen
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1,000 Words
Waiting and disappointment are a central part of existence for the
38,000 people at Greece’s critically overcrowded Aegean island camps, where Europe’s migrant crisis is clearly far from over.
At the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, the largest of the island
facilities, migrants wait in snaking lines for up to eight hours a day to
get their meals. The camp has mushroomed in size, growing seven times
more crowded than its capacity, and the Greek government and local
authorities are at odds about what to do with the migrants, because a
closed-off Europe has not offered another place to put them. (Giorgos
Moutafis for The Washington Post)
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Afterword
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Us trying to pretend it isn't Monday
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