Tuesday turned out to be an eventful day for US President Donald Trump. First, his jibe at Indian-origin Senator Kamala Harris who dropped out of the 2020 US Democratic presidential race, backfired big time.
She took to Twitter to announce her exit from the presidential race after her campaign lost steam because of her lukewarm performance at the debates and failure to raise funds. Trump was quick to take a dig at her, tweeting, “Too bad. We will miss you Kamala!” But the Democratic Party leader had the last laugh, tweeting a mic-drop comeback: “Don’t worry, Mr. President. I’ll see you at your trial”, referring to the ongoing impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Don’t worry, Mr. President. I’ll see you at your trial. https://t.co/iiS17NY4Ry
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) December 3, 2019
The US president's woes did not end there. Malayalis across the globe soon took a liking to Trump's post on 'Kamala', which, incidentally, is also the name of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's wife. The trolls started taking digs at Trump for 'missing' Vijayan's wife. While some mockingly threatened him saying he will now have to face the Communist leader's wrath, some chastised Trump for 'eyeing' another man's wife.
Vijayan and his wife Kamala are on a 11-day trip to Japan and South Korea. Some sarcastically asked Trump to wait till she gets back from the Japan tour and embarks on yet another US tour, referring to Vijayan's foreign trips with family.
Interestingly, though several posts appear to have been put up by CPI(M) supporters who 'genuinely mistook' Kamala Harris for Kamala Vijayan, these accounts, on inspection, seemed to be either fake or pro-BJP, pro-RSS or pro-Congress accounts.
A couple of years ago, a similar incident had happened when Malayalis trolled Australian cricketer Tom Moody after 'mistaking' him for the 'Moody' in US credit rating agency Moody's, which had upgraded India's sovereign rating to Baa2 from its lowest investment grade of Baa after 14 years. His Facebook page was bombarded with abuses, calling him Prime Minister Narendra Modi's stooge. The CPI(M) supporters' 'gaffe' was widely reported but later fact-checking website BOOMLive confirmed that most of the posts abusing Moody were posted from fake accounts posing as CPI(M) supporters, or pro-BJP and pro-RSS accounts, and that it might have been a planned attack by the right-wing groups to defame the CPI(M).
Fake or not, as one user said, let Trump get all these Malayalam comments translated to understand what the fuss is all about!
Trump, too, is not a stranger to Malayalis bombarding his Facebook page. His post on Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro's death, where he called him a 'brutal dictator' did not go down well with the Communist sympathisers down south, and was countered with comments, memes and trolls in Malayalam.
Malayalis have been at the forefront of trolling unsuspecting foreigners, especially sportspersons, on social media. Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova (who said she did not know Sachin Tendulkar) or Australian pacer Mitchell Johnson (who threatened to sledge Team India during the 2015 series) will vouch for it.
