Trump News Conference Provokes Anxiety, Humor and Shrugs Around World
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Version 0 of 1. There was no mention on Thursday of President Trump on Russia’s state television, which suddenly went silent about the American president after months of fawning coverage. At the BBC, a prominent host found himself facing down charges of fake news by a Trump aide. And in China, one sarcastic commenter predicted on social media that Mr. Trump might be a Communist Party agent who would bring down the United States. Around the world, observers reacted with anxiety, disbelief and humor to Mr. Trump’s 77-minute news conference on Thursday, which occurred as his top diplomat and defense chief were in Europe trying to reassure America’s allies. Here is a sample of the reactions. The Russian news media appears to be taking a step back from the brouhaha after Mr. Trump’s national security adviser resigned over telephone conversations with Russia’s ambassador to Washington and the country’s intelligence efforts. Rossiya 24, the cable news channel, halted its usually glowing coverage of the American president in an apparent sign of displeasure by the Kremlin. After months of heralding Mr. Trump’s election as a new era in relations, the Russian government is facing the new administration’s fidelity to established policies like demanding the return of Crimea to Ukraine. Dmitry S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said the notion that the Kremlin had ordered the change in coverage was “complete nonsense.” Yet the silence was strikingly uniform across the state-run channels, particularly since Russia was such a prominent topic at Mr. Trump’s news conference. “The Kremlin has a lot of things to do inside the country, and these things are much more important than press conferences given by the U.S. president,” Mr. Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency. “Therefore, we have no way or intention of following every press conference given by the U.S. president, with all our respect.” Sergei Parkhomenko, a Russian journalist on the website of Ekho Moskvy, the most popular liberal radio station, compared Mr. Trump’s performance unfavorably to that of lawmakers in Russia’s Parliament. “Until now, we thought that there was no one as petty and absurd in world politics,” he said. Though the news conference in Washington occurred after midnight in China, hundreds of viewers still awake posted sarcastic comments on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. “No matter what, Donald, we trust you with the job to take down America,” one person wrote. Another said: “Somehow the way he spoke reminds me of Mao Zedong, who often shifted the focus from the facts and started attacking people on their motives. I think the next step should be accusing his critics of being ‘enemies of the people.’” “That man is going to be assassinated,” predicted a local contractor for humanitarian aid groups who was watching the news conference in Maiduguri, Nigeria. “Idi Amin!” he belted out later, likening Mr. Trump’s performance to that of the former president of Uganda in the 1970s who was criticized for human rights abuses. “That’s what he used to do.” After a Jewish reporter’s interrupted attempt to ask Mr. Trump a question, the Israeli daily Haaretz considered whether or not the president’s protestations that he was not anti-Semitic were to be believed. The columnist Bradley Burston wrote that there was no longer any doubt in his mind: “Donald Trump IS an anti-Semite.” As an American Jew, Mr. Burston wrote, he wants “those of us who’ve honestly been trying hard to be as kind and careful and nuanced as we could” to be more direct. Politics is in the air in France, where the first round of a presidential election is scheduled to be held in April. François Clemenceau, the international editor at the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche, wrote on Friday that Mr. Trump’s news conference showed that he was still unable to “shoulder the responsibility” of being a uniting figure instead of a divisive one. “Of course, a big part of Donald Trump’s electorate will agree with its champion about the ‘nastiness of the press,’ will laugh at one of his vengeful morning tweets, and will clamor for even more slogans that denounce the paralysis of the political machine,” he added. “But a president has to act, not comment. Work, not whine. Rally as many around him without looking for scapegoats for his failures, which are quite normal for someone who had not prepared himself to govern.” Jacques Hubert-Rodier, a foreign policy editorial writer for the business daily Les Échos, wrote on Friday that Mr. Trump was a “stress test for the world,” quoting Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the United States. “The American president’s remarks, even the most incoherent ones, as shown again on Thursday by a hastily organized press conference, can translate into actions and can set off unexpected reactions,” Mr. Hubert-Rodier wrote, not only from the American public but also from foreign powers like North Korea or China. Mr. Trump’s “blurry” foreign policy is also a risk for international stability, he wrote, noting that “in 30 days, the American president still hasn’t set a clear policy vis-à-vis Moscow.” The United States correspondent for France Inter radio, Frédéric Carbonne, told French listeners early on Friday morning that the news conference was a “pretext” to attack the media. On Thursday, Mr. Carbonne said in a post on Twitter that Mr. Trump’s “freestyle” news conference was “quite similar to Vladimir Putin’s annual press conference-speech” and that the “surreal” event had dispelled the notion that Mr. Trump would “change” to become “more presidential.” In the center-right daily newspaper The Telegraph, Brian Klaas, the author of “The Despot’s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy,” wrote that Mr. Trump’s bashing of the news media was causing others to worry. “Republicans are panicking behind closed doors,” he wrote. “World leaders are panicking in the open. President Trump looked way out of his league for the hardest job on Earth.” Richard Wolffe, writing in the liberal daily The Guardian, likened Mr. Trump’s public appearances to a television show. “For the last several months we all thought we were watching the presidential version of ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’” he wrote. “Trump was going to walk into our living rooms, fire somebody at random, and then happily walk out.” He added: “In fact, we have our shows all mixed up. This is actually a very long season of ‘The Office,’ with our new president playing the role of a self-obsessed buffoon who clearly thinks he’s smart, funny, kind and successful. Trump is the boss we all know so well, and never want to see again.” The Toronto Star’s headline declared: “‘I’m Not Ranting and Raving’: Trump Attacks the Press at Wild News Conference,” and followed up with an article listing five other headlines The Star could have used to describe the event. Among them: “Starting War With Russia Would Boost Ratings, Trump Muses.” The Globe and Mail featured the news conference prominently on its front page with a more staid headline: “Unscripted Trump Re-Emerges, Defending First Month in Office.” Generally, however, the news conference did not prompt intense reaction, perhaps because Canadians no longer find Mr. Trump’s media-bashing all that unusual. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s main radio news broadcast, for example, focused on the generally more colorful headlines in the British news media. Robyn Urback, a columnist for CBC News, took a contrarian point of view. “For the average person — the casual Trump supporter, or maybe not even — the exhibition was a perfect example of what endears Trump to many Americans: He’s real,” she wrote, adding: “It was entirely unpresidential. Perfect.” |