Donald Trump, the president of the United States, makes news for several reasons and the latest one has left people shocked and amused. During a White House security meeting with intelligence officials, Trump reportedly pronounced Nepal and Bhutan as "Nipple" and "Button" and if that wasn't enough, he thought that these nations were a part of India.
The revelation was made by John Walcott, a TIME magazine correspondent, who spoke to intelligence sources and wrote about the incident in an article published on Tuesday, February 5.
...In another briefing on South Asia, Trump's advisors brought a map of the region from Afghanistan to Bangladesh, according to intelligence officers with knowledge of the meeting and congressional officials who were briefed on it," he wrote.
"Trump, they said, pointed at the map and said he knew that Nepal was part of India, only to be told that it is an independent nation. When said he was familiar with Bhutan and knew it, too, was part of India, his briefers told him that Bhutan was an independent kingdom."
Speaking of the article he wrote, Walcott told CNN presenter Brooke Baldwin that the intelligence sources believe that the president was a security risk who showed "wilful ignorance" on international affairs.
When Baldwin asked Walcott to give her instances that were a proof of this ignorance he said: "There are a combination of things. The first one is the President's ignorance. That goes to the point of thinking that Nepal and Bhutan — which incidentally he also mispronounced a 'nipple' and 'button' — are part of India, which they're not."
John Walcott @TIME shares his extraordinary reporting out today “'Willful Ignorance.' Inside President Trump's Troubled Intelligence Briefings. Added bonus: how Trump first pronounced Nepal (“nipple”) and Bhutan (“button”). Watch: #CNN pic.twitter.com/nVdzTwlQin
— Brooke Baldwin (@BrookeBCNN) February 4, 2019
Baldwin looked surprised at this and asked "Wait, seriously? That's what he said?" to which Walcott replied, "Seriously." Walcott went on to add that Trump had a "lack of curiousity about the world, which is different from other presidents."
Last August, Politico had reported that Trump had mispronounced the names of the two nations during the same briefing.
The intelligence officials spoke to Walcott at length of Trump's ignorance, hinting that the issues have been going on since the beginning of his presidency. The officials, on condition of anonymity, also detailed another incident when Trump behaved like a real estate developer instead of a president.
The officials said that before Trump met UK Prime Minister Theresa May, he was briefed on the British Indian Ocean Territory of Diego Garcia, which houses an important airbase and a US Naval Support Facility. However, Trump reportedly did not really show an interest in the importance of the region to the US and instead wanted to know if there were good beaches there.
The US president had two questions. "The first one was, 'Are the people there nice?' and the second one was, 'Are the beaches good?'" the officials told Walcott. "He was acting more like a real estate developer than like a President concerned about the security implications."
