Trump’s win sent shockwaves around the world and today’s papers are dominated with news of the one of the biggest political upsets in modern history. Here’s what the papers are saying about Trump’s triumph:
The Times describes Trump’s electoral triumph as heralding the start of ‘The New World’. It says that the president elect’s own words yesterday, that he wasn’t the head of a campaign ‘but rather an incredible and great movement’ is perhaps the best way of explaining why he won. The paper says that politics will ’never be the same again’; but whereas some panicky commentators insist that means bad news, the Times strikes a more upbeat tone in its editorial. It says ‘Britain in many ways is well positioned from his victory’, saying that he has a greater ‘affinity with and affection for these islands than Mr Obama’. The Times also points out Trump’s remarks about Britain being at the front of the queue for trade talks. Perhaps, the paper suggests, there are are reasons to be optimistic after all about Trump’s electoral win.
These glimmers of hope are blotted out by a gloomy editorial in the Guardian. The paper says Americans have done a ‘very dangerous thing this week’ and it describes Trump’s win as a ‘dark day for the world’. In its editorial, the paper says that the parallel with Brexit Britain is ‘obvious and real’, and it describes the election result as evidence of an ‘increasingly alarming general rightward shift in the politics of other post-industrial western democracies’. The Guardian suggests that there are now four big worries about Trump: his ‘unleashing of an unbridled conservative agenda’; the impact of this result on race relations in the US; Trump’s lack of economic plan; and its main fear: what Trump’s win will mean for a world order that has relied for so long on the US for stability.
If you think Donald Trump’s mild acceptance speech yesterday morning meant he had turned over a new leaf, think again says the FT. The paper suggests there are few reasons to think ‘Trump the candidate’ will be any different from ‘Trump the president’. It says that while the optimistic view is that Trump will change, ‘his temperament may not allow’ such a shift in away from talking about building walls and baiting Muslims. The paper goes on to say that Trump could even feasibly argue that it was precisely such sentiments that propelled him into the White House in the first place: so why stop now?
The pollsters and pundits might have got it wrong but the Simpsons got it right, says the Sun. The paper says that 16 years after an episode in which Donald Trump appeared as the US president, that ‘joke prophecy’ has proved right. In its editorial, the Sun says that for all the terrible things Trump may have said, it’s not much use ‘fixating on Trump’s hatred’. Instead, the paper says, it’s time to put a stop to the ‘sneering rage’ and accept that Trump won. The paper says Trump ’does have solid economic policies, including big tax reforms and cuts to red tape, which could certainly boost growth’. And it also strikes a more positive tone than the FT, saying his acceptance speech yesterday could well make a change of tone for the Donald. But the big worry, the paper says, is that if he fails to deliver on his word, the rage of those he lets down will be ‘terrifying’.
The Daily Telegraph describes yesterday’s momentous events as America’s ‘Brexit moment’. The liberal consensus which has held firm since the end of the Second World War is no more, the paper says. Yet while a wave of popularism swept Trump into the White House, it’s less clear how Trump will actually deliver, the paper says. The Telegraph points out that Trump’s protectionist policies could actually harm the wages of low-income Americans; while it says Republican opposition to Trump hasn’t gone away – which will make Trump’s plans difficult to implement. Still, the paper points out, therein lies the strength of the American system – in ensuring that President Trump is still constrained by checks and balances and won’t be able to abuse his power.
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