TOI correspondent from Washington: At 60, confusing Brazil with India would be a gaffe. At 80, it’s seen as going ga-ga — or to put it kindly, having a “senior moment.”US President Donald Trump, not known for his mastery of geography or history while claiming infallible memory and knowledge, blew it again on Sunday when he mistakenly posted about a purported election in India, when it was actually Brazil that went to the polls.“125 Million People voted today in the first round of India’’s Presidential Election. The results came out shortly after the vote closed, on the SAME DAY! In Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other US Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate,” Trump posted shortly before midnight, using a foreign prop to complain that elections in America are corrupt – unless, as critics have pointed out, he wins, in which case it’s fine.Trump later corrected the error, but the horse, or post, had bolted, with social media doing the rest. The original was screenshotted, reposted, mocked and converted into political ammunition before the correction could catch up.For a president who has made a political capital out of branding other people’s verbal slips as evidence of incompetence, the episode was cannon fodder for his critics. And because Trump is now 80, an age at which every stumble, lapse, squint and misplaced noun is examined under a political microscope, it immediately became more than a geographical gaffe; it became gold dust for geriatric gags.“Grandpa really needs to sleep at night,” one wag weighed in, referring to Trump’s increasingly nocturnal social media forays where, even some of his supporters concede, he posts “batshit crazy stuff.”There is also a growing industry in schadenfreude — the joy or pleasure of witnessing someone’s humiliation or embarrassment, given that Trump has spent years weaponising age and mental acuity against his political opponents, notably calling his predecessor Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe” and portraying himself as a vigorous replacement.But his own verbal miscues are accumulating by the day, and his rather elastic relationship with the geography of America’s neighbours and the wider world has become a butt of jokes. From inventing a country called “Nambia” to mispronouncing Nepal as “nipple” and Bhutan as “button,” and believing they are part of India, to coveting Canada and Greenland and calling Belgium a “beautiful city,” he has crushed cartography.The India-Brazil episode is particularly awkward because it involved two of the world’s largest democracies on opposite sides of the world, they are both members of BRICS which the MAGA boss dislikes, and a presidential election had occurred literally the previous day in a hemisphere Trump wants the US to dominate.The irony is that Trump does not behave like a man eager to retire into the Florida sunshine. He remains arguably the most visible president in US history, constantly traveling, playing golf, holding rallies, speaking extemporaneously for long periods, posting at all hours and routinely subjecting himself to the peculiar punishment of the modern presidency: standing before cameras and microphones while the entire world watches.On the other side of the ledger is what his critics increasingly describe as a catalogue of physical signs of aging. He has repeatedly been photographed with his eyes closed during meetings and public events. When asked about one particularly conspicuous episode during a Cabinet meeting, he rejected the suggestion that he had fallen asleep, explaining that he was merely bored, “I didn’t sleep,” he said. “I just closed them because I wanted to get the hell out of here.”Trump’s approach to health, age, and geography provides plenty of material for the comedians without requiring any help from his enemies. At an event over the weekend in Ohio, where he was campaigning for Vivek Ramaswamy, he volunteered a new chapter in his long-running aspirin saga, disclosing that he takes a mega dose of Bayer aspirin every day because he needs it psychologically. Meanwhile, Brazil, India, and many other countries in the world are reaching for something stronger to take care of the headaches he is causing.
