Trump spoke on the phone for the first time Modi said India my true friend
But of course he had, as the news segment demonstrated. So Trump says he had no choice. He had to listen to his people. “He energized me, that man,” the President-elect explained. “And I called up the head of United Technologies.”
What does this mean for 2016? Trump is not the man to win any Indian American voters. But since both candidates stand to gain few votes by engaging us nationally, the best political course is to ignore us. As the saying goes, Indians don’t complain, we adjust and assimilate.
Perhaps Trump saw something worth admiring in Melania’s willingness to walk away from the deal. Indeed, she waited a week before calling him. “I’m not starstruck,” she explains. “We had a great connection, we had great chemistry, but I was not starstruck. And maybe he noticed that.”
As for passions beyond the familial, there are a few. Melania dabbles in design. Her line of affordable gem-spangled jewelry and watches, launched on QVC, reportedly sold out in 45 minutes during its initial broadcast. (Melania’s caviar-infused anti-aging creams haven’t sold as well, though a federal judge ruled in her favor in a lawsuit she filed against its promoters.)
‘I hoped for change and never saw it’ But properly diagnosing the problem doesn’t help much if you live in a place that has taken it on the chin. In Shiawassee County, Michigan, which sits like a pit stop between Flint and Lansing, Obama won comfortably in 2008 and by a narrow margin in 2012. Then Trump tromped to victory this year with a 20-point margin. Rick Mengel, a 69-year-old retired pipe fitter, was one of the union members who voted for the young Illinois Senator in 2008, after seeing him promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Obama once called “devastating” and a “big mistake.”
Remember, November is not a referendum on racism. If we consider the Trump campaign as not just a means to the presidency, but an end itself, then he has already made his mark. Sure, he’s damaged the way we talk about race in this country. But he’s also accurately displaying the level of racial discourse in America right now. He has shown us so clearly that a huge portion of this country is stuck in 1916. Black people are thugs. Mexicans take jobs and are rapists. Muslims should be kept out, and Sikhs and Indians look like Muslims. Asians are good and obedient.
Three days earlier, Trump met with TIME in his towering dining room. The Carrier deal was basically done, thanks to a mixture of $7 million in state tax breaks, presidential threats and promises of tax and regulatory reform. But it was still a secret. His running mate, former Indiana governor Mike Pence, declined to discuss the deal when a reporter ran into him in Trump’s high-rise kitchen. But Trump could not stop himself. “I’m going to give you this off the record,” he said. “You can use it if they announce.”
In June 2015, Clinton’s pollster Joel Benenson laid out the state of the country in a private memo to senior staff that was later released to the public by WikiLeaks. The picture of voters was much the same as the one he had described to Obama in 2008 and 2012. “When they look to the future, they see growing obstacles, but nobody having their back,” Benenson wrote. “They can’t keep up; they work hard but can’t move ahead.” The top priority he listed for voters was “protecting American jobs here at home.”
Trump did not, however, mention a top issue for the Indian community: H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers. He has sent mixed messages on the program, which critics complain takes jobs away from U.S. citizens.
What does this mean for 2016? Trump is not the man to win any Indian American voters. But since both candidates stand to gain few votes by engaging us nationally, the best political course is to ignore us. As the saying goes, Indians don’t complain, we adjust and assimilate.
Perhaps Trump saw something worth admiring in Melania’s willingness to walk away from the deal. Indeed, she waited a week before calling him. “I’m not starstruck,” she explains. “We had a great connection, we had great chemistry, but I was not starstruck. And maybe he noticed that.”
As for passions beyond the familial, there are a few. Melania dabbles in design. Her line of affordable gem-spangled jewelry and watches, launched on QVC, reportedly sold out in 45 minutes during its initial broadcast. (Melania’s caviar-infused anti-aging creams haven’t sold as well, though a federal judge ruled in her favor in a lawsuit she filed against its promoters.)
‘I hoped for change and never saw it’ But properly diagnosing the problem doesn’t help much if you live in a place that has taken it on the chin. In Shiawassee County, Michigan, which sits like a pit stop between Flint and Lansing, Obama won comfortably in 2008 and by a narrow margin in 2012. Then Trump tromped to victory this year with a 20-point margin. Rick Mengel, a 69-year-old retired pipe fitter, was one of the union members who voted for the young Illinois Senator in 2008, after seeing him promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Obama once called “devastating” and a “big mistake.”
Remember, November is not a referendum on racism. If we consider the Trump campaign as not just a means to the presidency, but an end itself, then he has already made his mark. Sure, he’s damaged the way we talk about race in this country. But he’s also accurately displaying the level of racial discourse in America right now. He has shown us so clearly that a huge portion of this country is stuck in 1916. Black people are thugs. Mexicans take jobs and are rapists. Muslims should be kept out, and Sikhs and Indians look like Muslims. Asians are good and obedient.
Three days earlier, Trump met with TIME in his towering dining room. The Carrier deal was basically done, thanks to a mixture of $7 million in state tax breaks, presidential threats and promises of tax and regulatory reform. But it was still a secret. His running mate, former Indiana governor Mike Pence, declined to discuss the deal when a reporter ran into him in Trump’s high-rise kitchen. But Trump could not stop himself. “I’m going to give you this off the record,” he said. “You can use it if they announce.”
In June 2015, Clinton’s pollster Joel Benenson laid out the state of the country in a private memo to senior staff that was later released to the public by WikiLeaks. The picture of voters was much the same as the one he had described to Obama in 2008 and 2012. “When they look to the future, they see growing obstacles, but nobody having their back,” Benenson wrote. “They can’t keep up; they work hard but can’t move ahead.” The top priority he listed for voters was “protecting American jobs here at home.”
Trump did not, however, mention a top issue for the Indian community: H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers. He has sent mixed messages on the program, which critics complain takes jobs away from U.S. citizens.
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