Donald Trump has an opinion on the world’s largest democracy.
“India is doing great. Nobody talks about it,” the controversial American tycoon and Republican presidential frontrunner told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Jan. 25.
Blitzer was comparing Trump’s current views with those he’d expressed in previous conversations. In an interview to CNN on Sep. 24, 2007, Trump had talked about America’s decline and the rise of China and India. He had said:
Just look at this country (the US). We have gone from this tremendous power that was respected all over the world to somewhat of a laughing stock. All of a sudden, people are talking about China and India and other places, even from an economic standpoint. America has come down a long way, a long way. The US has come down a long way, and it’s very, very sad. We’re not respected.
In his response on Jan. 25 to the statement made almost nine years ago, Trump explained: “That was the beginning of China. That was the beginning of India, when India—by the way, India is doing great. Nobody talks about it. And I have big jobs going up in India. But India is doing great.”
Meanwhile, a day before his CNN interview, on Jan. 24, a turbaned Sikh man was forced out of Trump’s rally in the state of Iowa. Trump was speaking about Islamic terror, one of his common campaign subjects, when the Sikh man tried to display a ‘Stop Hate’ sign.
“When planes fly into the World Trade Center, and into the Pentagon, and wherever the third plane was going, when people are shooting their friends in California–” Trump said, according to the Washington Post, as the Sikh man was confronted by a security guard and a police officer.
“Bye, bye,” the presidential candidate said as the turbaned Sikh protestor was bundled out, before pointing to a supporter’s hat and asking: “He wasn’t wearing one of those hats was he?”