What the hell is Donald Trump Jr doing in India?
Don Junior is in India.
The Donald Trump child-man landed in the country on Monday evening to finalise and oversee the sale of luxury apartments spread across four Indian cities. Indian newspapers ran front-page ads wooing potential buyers, "Trump is here — are you invited?"
Indian newspapers are infamous for publishing cringe-inducing front-page ads to anyone who has got the moolah, political backing, or both. When the Narendra Modi-led government rolled out the demonetisation scheme on the same day as Donald Trump became president, newspapers here ran portraits of the leader along with logos of the move's most succulent beneficiaries — Paytm — an e-payment company which made $18.7 million a day following the biggest overhaul Indian monetary system had seen since independence.
But for now, that is beside the point.
The Indian newspapers advertising Don Junior's visit to India were literally asking potential buyers of Trump apartments the question — have you paid the fees to cozy up to the Trump brand?
That fees, it turns out, is an impressive $38,000 booking amount, which, not surprisingly, gets the buyer a "dinner and conversation" with Don Junior himself. His week-long trip is full of such dinners that would allow major Indian investors to get up-and-personal with him, and potentially, help them gain favours for their businesses in the US by a more sympathetic administration headed by his father.
Despite such a trip setting off alarm bells with ethics watchdogs in the US about a potential conflict of interest for an administration which is already bogged down by collusion and obstruction of justice claims, it does not seem to bother Don Junior in the slightest.
"They are auctioning off access to the first family in a foreign land," Norman Eisen, chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, put it bluntly.
"What is to stop a foreign national with interests before the US government from asking Don Junior to raise some issue or concern with his father?"
If anything, Don Junior claims that he must be seen as a pioneer in having helped discover the world's second-largest market for the Trump brand outside the US, and that people in America should be grateful because despite the existence of a plethora of business opportunities for the Trump organisation around the globe, Donald Trump decided to plunge headlong into the service of the American people.
"It is sort of a shame, we put on these impositions on ourselves but essentially got no credit for actually doing that and for actually doing the right thing," bemoaned Don Junior after a day of frolicking around his most prized projects, which he claims have taken him a decade of travel and building relationships.
The Manhattan-bred, reality-TV-apprenticed prodigy quashed insinuations that he is in India to help cull favours for Indian investors or that his trip has an underlying political agenda.
"It's about real estate," he summarily said, attempting to ward off reports that he could be in line for meetings with Indian government officials during the trip.
But it is not quite so straightforward. Don Junior is set to give a speech at a summit this Friday, called "Reshaping Indo-Pacific Ties: The New Era of Cooperation," where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also set to speak.
Donald Trump and Narendra Modi have not made their appreciation of each other a secret and it is a relationship which is not lost on Don Junior. In fact, he sees many similarities between them.
"I think there comes a point in someone's life where you have to take a stand," Don Junior said about his father, but he could as easily have been speaking about Modi.
"You actually will have to do what is right and what is important and it may not necessarily be popular to all people because everyone wants to believe that the world as a whole is a great place but I think an important part of my father is doing is what the other politicians around the world are doing which are pretty good successes. He is addressing real issues and tackling them not just for the popularity sake but because they actually have to be addressed."
It is a statement that will be welcomed by members of India's ruling party — the BJP — which also boasts of a huge amount of diaspora support in America and is in favour of Donald Trump. The Republican Hindu Coalition, the largest of its kind congregation of Hindu immigrants in the US, love Trump for many of the same reasons that they love Modi. They both adhere to the doctrine of nativism (Make America Great Again vis-à-vis Make in India), they both share a contempt for minorities (although Modi lets his party do the talking), and they both are obsessed with their images.
So despite Don Junior's protestations that his India trip has no political goal, it actually appears like a crucial ingredient. The summit appears designed to bring India's business partnership with the United States to the fore, but more significantly, it gives Don Junior complete access to India's most powerful man — just like his "dinners and conversations" provide Indian investors access to the world's most powerful man.
So much so that, in fact, the Indian ruling party and the media have conveniently downplayed Canadian PM Justin Trudeau's first state visit to India. Trudeau arrived with his family to India on February 17, but since then has been getting the cold shoulder from Modi and his party members. The Indian PM is known for the "hugs" he extends to other leaders at airports and at dinners (see Netanyahu), but Trudeau hasn't been quite so lucky.
Perhaps Don Junior will be.
So what the hell is Don Junior doing in India?
To begin with, he is solidifying the Trump brand in the Indian market. Remember, the Trumps don't always like building things ?- ?instead they licence their brand to builders, and in exchange, they charge a hefty price.
They see India has a huge market, which Don Junior was happy to point out. In this case, the licensing fees is believed to be somewhere around $3 million, but Don Junior would rather keep quiet about the details.
Second, the trip is being treated as an opportunity to bolster Trump's relationship with Modi, who is admired by Trump for his heavy-handedness and controversial decisions? - ?qualities that Don Junior loves as well.
Quite what their private discussions during the summit may be about — if at all Don Junior and Modi do get a chance for some tête-à-tête — but one could assume it will entail Trump's expansionist vision in India as well as perhaps relaying Modi's messages to his father. Maybe a word on China? And Pakistan? Don Junior is technically not in the administration, but this summit is being billed as a "foreign policy" conclave, and Junior won't mind giving his two cents.
Third, and perhaps the one that should demand the most amount of scrutiny is the probable access to Donald Trump that would be granted to would-be investors. After all, doing deals overseas is bound to bring much less attention than if those deals were to take place in America. In India, it should be a reason for journalists to scour through the deals, because let's be honest — by the looks of it — it appears a shady sort of a trip.
Because as we are well aware, the Trump brand, or indeed their Indian counterparts, are not immune to corruption. It is an opportunity Indian businessmen with interests in the United States will accept with glee. Any declaration on the contrary by Don Junior must be taken with a bucket of salt.
And fourth, Don Junior is in India also because Ivanka couldn't make it. As explained by the Lodha Group, one of the builders of Trump Towers in the subcontinent, Ivanka Trump would have been their first choice, because as one employee said, she has a "better public image."
"Ideally we'd have preferred Ivanka," he said.
Seems like the decade-long effort that Don Junior put into relationship building never convinced his Indian partners — so much for trust.
But Don Junior claims to have learnt a lot on his trip already.
"I don't want to be glib but you can see the poorest of the poor and there is still a smile on a face," he said about India's working class poor.
It is not a surprise he said that, considering his Indian partners employ poor migrants who flock the cities for work at cut-throat prices. These real estate honchos feed off India's overpopulation and just because the workers have the charm and simplicity to smile at guests even in such desperate conditions, does not mean they are not being exploited.
"I know some of the most successful businessmen in the world, and some of them are the most miserable people in the world," Junior concluded.
I guess we all know who he was talking about.
This article first appeared on Medium.