TOI correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump has suggested that the Biden administration was “trying to get somebody else elected” in India last year with a $21 million USAID grant for voter turnout in the country.
Obliquely hinting that his predecessor’s administration was backing the opposition Congress Party and its allies, Trump told a Saudi-backed investment conference in Miami, “We have got to tell the Indian Government… This is a total breakthrough.” Trump is perceived as having a close relationship with Modi despite differences between the two countries on trade.
It was not clear what the US President meant by breakthrough, nor did he offer any evidence for his claim. But Trump framed the purported poll interference in India with allegations by many Democrats and liberals in US that Russia puts it thumb on the US election scale to get him (Trump) elected in the US elections in 2016.
“Russia spent about $2 in our country. It was a big deal, right? They took some internet ads for $2,000” Trump scoffed in a reference to frequent charges that he is a “Putin stooge,” allegations that continue to echo in liberal and progressive circles in the US, particularly now that he has virtually thrown Ukraine and NATO under the Russian bus.
Trump has long resented the allegations and denied them, arguing that he is tough on Russia even though there is no particular reason for Washington to be at odds with Moscow. Republicans and Democrats have also traded charges about each other’s alleged shenanigans in Ukraine.
Trump has often made the case for US non-interference and against “nation-building” in other parts of the world, although that sentiment is now at odds with his and his minions’ interference in countries from Canada to Germany to South Africa, and his proposals to evict Gazans and rebuild the territory.
The US President’s swipe at the previous administration and its purported backing of the Congress party electrified many supporters of the BJP in India who believe Trump and Modi face the same liberal enemies. The BJP’s IT cell went to town with the allegations, with its head Amit Malviya charging that US funding for “Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance” spiked in 2022, coinciding with Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.
“There was a systematic attempt to influence the 2024 general election to ensure alternate outcome. This is just a small slice of the larger conspiracy,” Malviya alleged, referring to Trump’s $21 million question.
In fact, the US under both Republican and Democratic administrations has a long history of meddling in the politics of other countries, including in India going back to the 1950s when the CIA backed Congress and its allies against the Communist Party in Kerala.
The effort, well-chronicled by political historians, was aimed at forestalling the growing “Red menace” across Asia, leading to the first elected Communist government outside Russia and China, in Kerala.