‘Elvis’ trends after Trump’s remark
NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday compared Indian PM Narendra Modi’s popularity with that of American rock star Elvis Presley as they met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Speaking about the recently held ‘Howdy Modi!’ event in Houston, which was attended by 50,000 people, Trump said, “They loved this gentleman (Modi) to my right... Those people went crazy. That was like Elvis. That was like Elvis Presley, he was like an American version of Elvis, like an all-American Elvis came back.”
Shortly after Trump’s remark, #Elvis had briefly become one of the top trends on Twitter even as the press briefing went on.
At the same time, “Elvis Presley” began trending on Google with the search seeing a steep increase on Tuesday night.
“There’s been a sudden spike in Google searches for Elvis today in India. I wonder what caused it,” tweeted Dhruva Jaishankar, a fellow in foreign policy at Brookings India and son of foreign minister S Jaishankar.
“If Narendra Modi is Elvis Presley, then I am Jennifer Lopez,” tweeted Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha.
Interestingly, the BJP’s official account shared a video clip of Trump praising Mo di, captioning it with a section of the transcript.
Commenting on the matter, BJP spokersperson Nalin Kohli said, “The comparison... clearly indicates the strong bonds between him and the (Indian) prime minister.”
Sharmishtha Mukherjee, the AICC’s national spokesperson, was hardly amused. She was also not impressed by the fact that Trump dubbed the Indian PM “Father of India”.
She told HT, “The Father of India (tag) is for people like Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel, who united India. If he is not aware of them, he should ask his office to do a simple Google search.”