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Mumbai-based Americans decode the Hillary-Trump theatre

Updated on: 30 October,2016 10:26 AM IST  | 
Gitanjali Chandrasekharan | gitanjalichandrasekharan@mid-day.com

3 Americans entered a bar ...and sparked off a discussion on the US prez elections. From mud-slinging politics to conspiracy theories, everything was on the table, and we listened in

Mumbai-based Americans decode the Hillary-Trump theatre

Ashifa Sarkar Vasi, Thomas Hoy, Gregory Kroitzsh at Lower Parelu00c3u0083u00c2u00a2u00c3u0082u00c2u0080u00c3u0082u00c2u0099s Barking Deer on Wednesday evening. Pics/Shadab Khan

Ashifa Sarkar Vasi, Thomas Hoy, Gregory Kroitzsh at Lower Parel’s Barking Deer on Wednesday evening. Pics/Shadab Khan
Ashifa Sarkar Vasi, Thomas Hoy, Gregory Kroitzsh at Lower Parel’s Barking Deer on Wednesday evening. Pics/Shadab Khan


Gregory Kroitzsh: If you polled Indians, I'd bet a lot would say what is America doing? Who is this crazy guy?
Thomas Hoy: I don't know… what do Indians know about Trump?
Ashifa Sarkar Vasi: What does anyone know about Trump?
We didn't even have to trigger the conversation. As soon as Kroitzsh (50), Hoy (52) and Sarkar Vasi (35) — all American citizens currently living in Mumbai — sat on the high seats at Lower Parel brewery, Barking Deer, which Kroitzsh owns, the conversations headed to Donald Trump. An American businessman, television producer and now the Republican Party nominee in running for the 2016 presidential elections, he is discussed as is an election that has the whole world on tenterhooks.

Hoy, a jet pilot, has been working in India since 2012 and Sarkar Vasi, a trained ballet dancer raised in Lousiana, now teaches in Mumbai where she lives with her husband and a four-year-old daughter.

Hoy: I've read about Trump's media releases for 35 years, and I hate him. He has a Grandiose syndrome. He has a team that gets every printed word about him [and puts it up in his office] because he loves his name to be used in print.
Kroitzsh: His big thing was to get on the cover of TIME magazine. Even when the article was critical, as long as he was on the cover, he was happy.
Hoy: He is not going away, that's what feeds him, the attention and media spotlight…
Sarkar Vasi: ...And he's getting a lot of that right now.


mid-day: Are the conspiracy theories for real?
TH: Yes, there's a lot of conspiracy on both sides. And the negative publicity began with the Clintons. The Republican Party realised early on that Hillary might be a candidate, especially when she ran for Senator. And, then they started throwing mud. Even I have this distaste for Hillary that goes beyond some things that I don't like about her, but I know it's there. It's like an advertising that I have been hearing about.
GK: Everyone's talking about Trump and how he could be basically the next fascist dictator for America. But, what's getting lost here is a real historic moment where we are going to have the first female president. She is going to be the most powerful person in the world. A woman is going to be the most powerful person in the world, for the first time ever, and we should not miss that.
TH: There are so many people at play here. There's Assange, Russia. My god, if it was a soap opera, it would have been written by some good writers.


US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (R) and US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump debate during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 9, 2016. Pic/AFP
US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (R) and US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump debate during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 9, 2016. Pic/AFP

MD: What if it's scripted. (Isn't that another theory?)
GK: Well there's a theory that Trump is actually rooting for the Democrats. I've heard that he's there to lose the elections.

On Hillary being elected for not being Trump
TH: She is a good candidate and she's been maligned. She's had mud thrown on her for so long that she's not going to be respected. In fact, what all this mud slinging has done is made the office of the Presidency a low-life, which is not how it should be.

On Trump's campaign
GK: Trump's running a fact-free campaign, basically.
SV: Yes, exactly. He doesn't say anything. What he does is criticize Hillary and what little he does say is constantly proven to be incorrect. And he's way off. Hillary has at least distorted the truth…

On reactions of friends back home
SV: I grew up in Louisiana. I have a friend who, after the video of Trump talking about sexual assault, put up a post on Facebook saying, 'Yes there are still women who support Trump' and I had to unfollow her. I just could not take it anymore. In Lousiana, a lot of Republicans who are not looking at issues, look at the pro-life issue and run with it.
GK: It's looking through one lens. A lot of people do that.
SV: My hometown got flooded a few weeks ago. There were people who lost their homes and FEMA came in. A friend posted that she has three kids, all American citizens and she's been working and paying taxes. So, when she went to the FEMA office, she got a cheque for a few hundred dollars. But, somebody else, who was an illegal immigrant whose child was an American citizen, got a cheque of a few thousands dollars. She felt very cheated.

And I don't think she's a hardcore Republican, but I know these kind of things will make them say, 'I don't want immigrants'.

GK: It's these people who feel they are being left behind, and they may be a small group but now they are getting vocal and finding their voice through Donald Trump.
GK: Trump said something like pretty soon you will have a Mex-Taco stand every corner and we are like, "yeah., that's great, we'd love that".
TH: I would love that to happen…
[as conversation veers to the lack of a good Mexican eatery in Mumbai] GK: What this discussion represents is that Mexican culture is a really important part of America.
MD: Do you see a parallel between the Indian and American elections?
TH: I don't think you are allowed to say those things in the media. The comedy shows obviously can't mock people. Wasn't there this comedian who we thought was going to prison for a while (Kiku Sharda). So, we can make comedy, at least we have that advantage.
GK: Are there parallels between the politicians? Well, there are if you think about it. The Clintons are like the Gandhis representing a dynasty. Modi is like Trump, representing the far right and a lot of people think Trump is authentic, and so is Modi.
GK: That's a leading question (accusingly)
SV: But Modi ran Gujarat, I don't know what Trump has run.
GK: But, he's run his companies. In America, a lot of people have this idea that politicians are the root of the evil and if we get real people and businessmen, we will get business solutions.
GK: But, you can't get a plumber to run the country. He's a real-estate magnate, what gives him the qualifications?
SV: Even then, how well has he run any of his businesses?
TH: He ran them into the ground.
SV: And, proudly claims to have filed for bankruptcy and not filed taxes for 19 years, because he found some loophole.

Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama

MD: Do you feel cheated that this election is no longer about issues?
SV: I hate watching the debates because there's nothing of substance that's spoken.
TH: It's more about the battle of the dynasties.
SV: When Clinton says something, she will says two sentences that matter and four sentences that…
GK: Four sentences that go to Trump… Which works. All the time, because he's so
thin-skinned.
GK: The third debate was the most substantive. It's been a fact-free and issue-free campaign, because Trump is dominating the airways, and no one is focusing on Clinton. She is fine with that because she realises that when all this negativity comes out, she will be fine.

MD: What issues do you wish they had discussed?
T: In the western part of the US, over half the land is public land owned by the world. It's managed by various agencies. There's been a conservative movement to transfer the control of these lands from the federal government to the states. The states will sell the land to private agencies. Not all of it, not immediately.
GK: The states will think that Trump, being the businessman, will see the value of this land. So, all of a sudden these national treasures will be sold to the highest bidder.
TH: These lands are sacred to me. I camp, mountain glide. It's unlike anywhere on earth, except for may be Australia. You don't see that in India. Trump has been talking about disbanding the EPA (he didn't even know what it's called), which is responsible for cleaning up the environment. Trump and friends do not believe in climate change.
SV: There was talk of how none of the debates discussed climate change. For me, the top issue is more about a sense of community. With all the racial profiling in terms of the cop cases across the country, with Trump attacking the Khan family, he is basically feeding every kind of phobia that exists. As a Muslim who grew up in the south, in the Bible belt, I have serious issues with that. I never faced racism...
SV: I don't know if Trump is responsible for it. Globally, the world is becoming more polarized; we should not be making refugees feel like they have no homes.
GK: That's the only issue that's been discussed. The issue of community, race. He has focused on it, but on the wrong side of it.
SV: That's what's wrong with it.
GK: My issue is that there's not been enough focus on infrastructure. Human infrastructure, like education, and roads and railways, energy systems.
If as a country, we are to be competitive in the world, we have to prove ourselves. For that we need education and better infrastructure. And, that's why Hillary I think, she hasn't been able to say anything about it, but she does have policy papers on infrastructure.

MD: What happens if Trump wins?
SV: We can't go there.
TH: Trump will lose. The Republican Party is history. They are fractured so badly.
SV: After this, I hope, we no longer have a two-party system.

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