US President Donald Trump has said that India has "filthy" air. The comment came as he addressed his decision to pull out from the 2015 Paris climate accord during the second presidential debate on 22 October.
"Look at China, how filthy it is. Look at Russia. Look at India. The air is filthy. I walked out of the Paris Accord as we had to take out trillions of dollars and we were treated very unfairly", said Trump during the televised showdown in Nashville, Tennessee.
Trump was justifying pulling out from the Paris climate accord, stating that he values jobs as it would have made the US a non-competitive nation. Biden warned that the US cannot handle four more years of Trump rolling back environmental regulations.
Trump’s negative mention of India along with Russia and China during the presidential campaign for a second time in several weeks led to an avalanche of reactions on social media, with questions being raised in Indian politicial - and other - circles over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's friendship with POTUS.
Earlier, Trump accused the aforementioned countries of not revealing the real COVID-19 death toll - a claim consistently denied by Delhi, Moscow, and Beijing.
A leader of India's main opposition party Congress, Kapil Sibal, took to the moment to get in a jibe at Modi calling Trump's jabs the "fruits of friendship" and reminding him of the "Howdy Modi" rally - a mega event held in Texas last year while the Indian PM visited the US.
Several users insisted the Indian prime minister should respond to Trump over his repeated jibes at India.