President Trump’s February 2020 state visit to India. I was honored to go on the trip because I was one of the few senior administration officials of Indian heritage. I speak Gujarati, the dialect used in the region of India where the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is from (as is my own family). Trump was slated to fly first to Gujarat and deliver an address to a cricket stadium filled with more than one hundred thousand Indians near my hometown. It was going to be a big moment, both for Trump and Modi, as well as for the US-India relationship. I had arranged for my parents to be there and had worked closely with the president’s speechwriters to ensure the remarks were full of cultural references that would resonate with the Indian people.

Around midnight, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on Air Force One, the president wanted to talk to me about a number of matters. The plane was entirely blacked out with staffers sleeping, all except for me and President Trump. The president invited me into his office in the nose of the 747 and asked me who I thought should be the director of national intelligence. I gave him exactly the same name I had given him before: John Ratcliffe. The congressman from Texas and former federal prosecutor had been rock solid on the House Intel, Judiciary, and Homeland Security committees. Despite the media blowback, he called the Russian witch hunt and Mueller charade what they were. He was tough, and he knew that the job of the director of national intelligence wasn’t just to compile intel for the president but to help reform the broken intelligence community.

The president told me to go and make the call. “Ask him if he’ll do it,” Trump told me. So I headed downstairs to the belly of Air Force One and hopped on a secure line. Somewhere back in the US, Ratcliffe got a call from a hidden number, the Air Force One operator. The line connected and I spoke. “John, it’s Kash. The president wants to know if you’ll take the DNI job.” Ratcliffe just laughed. We both knew the answer. So I ran back upstairs and told the president, “We are good to go, Boss.”

Meeting up with parents

Hours later we landed in Gujarat, where Trump received a king’s welcome. I was ecstatic. It was my birthday, I was in my native hometown, and my parents ended up in the front row while President Trump and Prime Minister Modi delivered remarks to over one hundred thousand people. My parents were delayed, and they almost didn’t make it. We had been trying to make arrangements prior to departing from the US, but the logistics were so complicated that the staff assigned to ensure my parents got all the right credentials, invitations, security clearances, directions, and everything else weren’t able to get all the ducks in a row in time. Ivanka found out that my parents were not going to be able to make it because folks had dropped the ball, so she made a call from the plane. To this day I don’t know what she said. But I do know that when we arrived at the stadium, my parents weren’t there. Then, partway through the speech, they walked down the aisle and took the seats we set aside for them right in the front row. You couldn’t see it on camera, but right in the middle of the speech, I ran over and gave them a huge hug. One of my most treasured photos was taken that day with me, my mom, and my dad all together smiling in front of the stage with President Trump and Prime Minister Modi speaking near our hometown in Gujarat.

Meeting with Modi

After that incredible moment, I had no idea that the trip was about to get even better, as if that were even possible. The next day in New Delhi, I was part of the large delegation that accompanied the president to his meetings with Prime Minister Modi. At the start of one diplomatic meeting, the group followed Trump and Modi into a very long room, with the two leaders seated up front and staff seated “back benching” along the side. I was surprised I was even allowed in the room, with the national security advisor, the secretary of commerce, the ambassador, and others all present and outranking me. 

Yet as I walked in, the president turned to me and shouted, “Kash, have you met my friend Narendra?” He urged me to come over, and soon I was speaking to “India’s Trump” in our native dialect, with the prime minister asking all about my family and background (of which he already knew, having clearly been briefed on me before our arrival).

The leaders introduced the various members of their delegations to each other—when President Trump got to me, he turned to Prime Minister Modi and said, “You don’t want to know what he does. He’s my intel guy.” The whole room started laughing. That statement proved more true than I was aware. 

(Excerpted from Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy by Kash Pramod Patel, with permission from the publisher, Wisdom Tree).