It is quite obvious, that any comparison to Donald Trump is far from flattering. He is seen as racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, paranoid, conceited, and frankly not very bright. No one wants to hear that someone they think well of, is like the Donald. So when TV show host Trevor Noah went on his show to compare Pakistan's new PM Imran Khan with Donald Trump, Pakistani tweeple were having none of it!
This video predictably went viral. Noah cleverly picks out some startling similarities between Khan and Trump: the privileged background, playboy image, a penchant for gold bedrooms, conservative politics and more. Watch the video to see some rather scary parallels.
According to Noah, the hardline nationalism, and self-aggrandizing displays of wealth is all a part of the Trump formula which Khan is now following.
Many of course, disagreed with the observations, pointing out some pictures of Khan where he appears to be undergoing some small amount of hardship; which is supposed to prove that Khan is not a materialist.
This tweet makes valid points – it is a fact that Khan isn’t some Johnny who's come lately to Pakistan politics and that he has been elected to parliament before as well. The Twitter user goes on to list more of Khan’s acts of benevolence; more aspects in which he differs from Trump.
Many on both sides of the border believe that Khan is what his country needs right now. Many who came out in support of Khan also recall his days as a top cricketer, his efforts at opening the first cancer hospital etc. Many on Twitter feel that he has used his celebrity to do good in his country and brings hope to the region.
This tweet feels that Noah has taken a simplistic view of the supposed parallels between the two leaders, ignoring the 22 years of political struggle that came before Khan was actually elected.
This tweet suggests that Khan’s words are taken and quoted out of context and that Noah is in a sense cherry picking to make his point. Now that is certainly a valid point. When Khan speaks, he sounds sane, coherent, plausible; Trump mostly cannot string together a coherent sentence, usually contradicts himself and often sounds quite unhinged.
This tweet speaks of one billion trees that Khan is said to have had planted in about a year; which seems to point to some amount of empathy for the environment. This is certainly in stark contrast to Trump’s stance, which is outright climate change denial.
This is one of the very few tweets that appears to actually get what Noah is trying to say via humour and satire: it isn’t about actions but regressive politics and ideologies and their future impacts. Khan has frequently shown to align himself with religious hardliners in his country, has displayed misogyny at a personal level and shown himself to hold regressive beliefs. As this twitterer says, it is a ‘global political regression’ and it is ‘less funny, more terrifying’ – for all of us.
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