In an interview with CNBC India (video above), part of a week-long campaign to promote luxury apartments in Trump Tower apartment blocks, Donald Trump Jr chose to talk about what makes India’s poorest people special. “You go through a town, and I don’t mean to be glib about it, but you can see the poorest of the poor, and there is still a smile on a face, you say hello,” he said.
The Western fascination with India’s “soul” seems to be alive and well in the US President’s son. And Trump Jr is able to see what he no doubt interprets as the spiritual resilience of India’s poor, instead of acknowledging the unwelcome legacy of colonialism and the enormous – and rising – inequality between the rich and the rest.
Trump Jr, who has taken over the family’s real estate business since his father got busy with other things, added that compared with other parts of the world, where most people walk around “solemnly”, this “spirit” was something unique to “emerging countries”.
But he didn’t stop there. To show that it is actually the rich who are the poor (and, of course, vice-versa), Trump Jr had this to say: “I know some of the most successful people in the world and some of them are the most miserable people in the world, also, right, and there’s that spirit [here] that really shines through.”
According to him, it’s all about the spirit, and the rich could stand to learn a thing or two from India’s poverty-stricken people.
Like how to not to live in Trump Tower flats that range in price from Rs 5.5 crore to Rs 11 crore, and join the ranks of the homeless instead?
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