Bit more impressive than your Taj, Donald!
ONE was a tawdry failed casino in America’s East Coast gambling capital and the other remains among the world’s most beautiful buildings.
And yet they have two things in common – Donald Trump and the fact that they were both named Taj Mahal.
President Trump visited the real Taj in Agra, northern India, yesterday and declared it ‘incredible’.
Certainly the world heritage site was considerably more impressive than the gaudy casino he opened in Atlantic City in 1990 called Trump’s Taj Mahal.
The $1.2billion casino-hotel was the largest in the world when it opened in 1990 but just a year later he had to file for bankruptcy protection for the complex.
The President’s tour of the Taj Mahal – where police armed with catapults kept the site’s feral monkeys away from him and his wife Melania – was part of a 36hour official visit to India.
Earlier, he was taken to a rally in his honour at the world’s largest cricket stadium in the city of Ahmedabad, where he faced a crowd of 110,000.
A seven-foot wall was built to hide the city’s slums from Mr Trump’s motorcade but he received a warmer welcome along the route than he has in many countries.
Crowds had queued from 4am for the ‘Namaste Trump’ rally at the Motera
Stadium, which echoed a ‘Howdy Modi’ event in America last year when India’s prime minister Narendra Modi visited Houston in Texas.
He praised India as ‘a great, free country’ and told the vast crowd: ‘America loves India.’
But he stumbled over several Indian names during his speech, including that of cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and the ancient Hindu texts known as the Vedas, which he called the ‘Vestas’.
The leaders of the world’s two largest democracies will hold trade talks during Mr Trump’s visit, which continues today.