I was on “The Debate with Arnab” on April 24, 2026, on Republic TV in India. (Host Arnab Goswami is reportedly the biggest TV journalist in India. If not for that fact, I probably wouldn’t appear on his goofy, heavily slanted show, because it’s generally not a good time. Oh, and reaching out to a potentially significant percentage of the nearly 1.5 billion people in India appeals to me for some reason. I like India and have ever since I was a little kid reading Rudyard Kipling and watching “The Man Who Would Be King,” starring Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer.)

On the show, Goswami repeatedly falsely claimed that Trump called India a “hellhole,” so I tried to correct him, and the guy ran me over.

I pointed out that on April 23, Trump posted on Truth Social a transcript from conservative commentator Michael Savage’s “The Savage Nation” podcast.

In the transcript, Savage is discussing birthright citizenship. He says:

“A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet. You don’t have to go too far to see that. English is not spoken here anymore. That there’s almost no loyalty to this country amongst the immigrant class coming in today, which was not always the case.” [boldface added]

The Trump administration quickly backed away from the “hellhole” characterization of India, saying that was not the president’s opinion of India. When I checked Truth Social for the post, it was gone.

Obviously, Trump posted the transcript because it aligned with his views on birthright citizenship.

Clearly, this was a damaging diplomatic faux pas on Trump’s part, but when India reacted angrily, the president quickly backed down. (How often does he do that?)

Here is the video clip: