You like Trump... trampling on Nikki?

For keen observers - and even blunt ones - of American election politics, what stands between Donald Trump's Second Gig at the big white house with pillars in Washington and him opening skilling centres in Maga-rage is the last non-Don Republican standing: Nikki Haley. By the time you are reading this, New Hampshire will have conducted its first Republican primary to make its choice of whom to send as proto-Potus. Haley is likely to not win (in Trumpspeak: LOSE!). But what should raise the eyebrows of those following the race here from India - especially those who have a thing for the muscular, spittle-flying art of The Trumpoline - is the way the former president has been attacking someone we have been following with extra attention from this side of the Potomac for being of Indian-origin.

Haley, of late, has been questioning Trump's mental fitness to be leader of the free world, accusing him of being buddies with autocrats, Vladimir P being such a specimen. But Trump has gone guttural, not only wrongly questioning Haley's eligibility to run for president for not having parents who were US citizens when she was born - untrue - but also mocking her name Nimarata by misspelling and refusing to use her middle name that she prefers: Nikki. Hints of racism or tactical 'everything is allowed in politics'? You decide.