TOI correspondent from Washington: Former diplomats and analysts are cautioning against reading too much into (President) Trump’s comments dialing down his diatribe against India saying it is typical of his playbook that includes bait and switch to keep perceived adversaries off-balance. At various times, the MAGA supremo has made similar complimentary remarks about leaders of China, Russia, and even North Korea, while trying to get a leg up on the countries amid growing mistrust of Trumpian America across the world. “India has little to no reason to trust the United States after the administration made an elective choice to tank the relationship by undoing even the achievements with New Delhi from President Trump’s own first term,” former State Department official Even Feigenbaum wrote in a post on X The wielding of sanctions-like instrument against India and repeatedly referring to tariffs as sanctions, he said, “has stirred up every conceivable bad historical memory and neuralgia about Washington in India from the past.”

Indeed, forget about salvaging the damaged relationship with India, the Trump regime has by most accounts antagonized even close allies and treaty partners across the world with its MAGA mania. Aside from wrecking ties with neighbors Canada and Mexico, and with nations as far apart as Denmark, Japan, and Brazil, the Trump dispensation on Friday managed to antagonize both North Korea and South Korea with different capers. Hundreds of South Korean workers at a Hyundai plant in Georgia were arrested by ICE agents for alleged visa violations leading to protests in front of the US Embassy in Seoul and the South Korean Foreign Minister rushing to the US to rescue them from detention. The workers were mostly qualified engineers and technicians ramping up on the investment Trump has been extracting from foreign leaders. The incident also offered a preview into what could happen to Indian workers in a Trumpian America seized by MAGA xenophobia. In another development, the New York Times on Friday revealed a secret military operation Trump authorized in his first term to infiltrate North Korea to plant an electronic listening device to monitor its leader Kim Jong-un’s communications ahead of their meeting that was later presented as pathbreaking and friendly. The dangerous mission, carried out by SEAL Team 6, involved a nuclear submarine and mini-subs. But it was aborted when the SEALs encountered a small boat with North Korean fishermen, who they killed before retreating. The SEALs punctured the boat crew’s lungs with knives to make sure their bodies would sink, the report cited one unnamed US official as saying.Also this week, Trump disclosed a military strike on a vessel in the Caribbean that it claimed was carrying drugs and operated by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The strike reportedly killed 11 people.