Fact Check: Old video of Tharoor bashing Trump goes viral as his delegation visits US
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor is leading an all-party Parliamentary delegation to five countries to brief the world on India's response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack and its broader fight against terrorism. The delegation has visited the United States and Guyana, and will travel to Panama, Brazil, and Colombia soon.A video now going viral purports to show Tharoor taking a dig at US President Donald Trump during an event in New York. Congress Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh shared this clip, writing: 'A wise person once said- A diplomat is a person who tells you to go to hell in such a way, that you actually start looking forward to the trip. That's the class of Shashi Tharoor. He can sit in the US and take POTUS to the cleaners with a smile.'advertisement
In the video, Tharoor says that while he 'shouldn't be commenting on political leaders in foreign countries on their soil', his personal manner struck him as 'not entirely as agreeable or pleasant as one would like to see in a distinguished American political figure'. He says that he had met four or five US presidents — from both parties there — who had a certain 'political heft, statesman-like gravitas, and intellectual quality that I find woefully lacking in this gentleman'. India Today Fact Check found that while Tharoor was indeed talking about Trump, this video is from September 2024, when the MP was speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival in New York.Our ProbeReverse-searching frames from the video led us to an Instagram post dated September 24, 2024. This makes it clear that this video long predates the all-party delegation visiting the Americas right now. advertisement View this post on Instagram A post shared by Asia Society Museum (@asiasociety)We then found the full talk on the YouTube channel of the Asia Society, an American organisation that focusses on educating the world about Asia. The video's description noted that this talk was from September 10, 2024, at the Jaipur Literature Festival in New York.It was also shared on the Asia Society's official website. At the event, India Today Group Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie spoke to Tharoor on various issues regarding Indian and American politics. The viral clip can be seen around the 12-minute-40-second mark, when Aroon Purie asks Shashi Tharoor, 'What do you think about Trump?' The day after the event, on September 11, 2024, the official accounts of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Asia Society, and Shashi Tharoor shared various photos from the talk on Instagram. View this post on Instagram A post shared by JLF International (@jlfinternational)It's noteworthy that at the time, the president of the US was Joe Biden.What did Tharoor say in the US now?On Saturday, May 24, Tharoor spoke at an interaction hosted by the Consulate General of India in New York for a select group of prominent members of the Indian-American community. There, he said that the time had come to set a "new bottom line" in India's dealings with Pakistan.advertisement"We have tried everything — international dossiers, complaints, everything has been tried," he said, adding that Pakistan had remained in denial, with "no convictions, no serious criminal prosecutions, and no genuine attempt to dismantle" its terror infrastructure.The full address can be seen below: Thus, it's clear that the viral clip of Shashi Tharoor taking a dig at Donald Trump is not recent and was made when Joe Biden was the US President.Must Watch
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