“The USA and the rest of the world should be afraid, very afraid.” The opening line of the Daily Mirror’s leading article on Saturday summed up the reaction of the entire national press to the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.
There was a mixture of fear and loathing amid continuing wonder at such a turn of events. Papers of the left and right and the in-between were united in their concern at what will happen next.
The Mirror argued that Trump’s “rambling, pugnacious, protectionist speech fell frighteningly short of the dignity and optimism required at an inauguration.”
The Guardian saw it in similar terms: the speech “was by turns bitter, blowhard and banal. It boiled with resentment and contempt for politics, and the checks and balances of the US system.”
In company with several papers that highlighted Trump’s “American First” refrain, the Guardian thought it smacked of “crude and shameless” nationalism.
As the Independent pointed out, Trump’s claim that protectionist policies “will lead to prosperity and strength” defies “every experience in history” which “suggests that it merely impoverishes all equally.” It continued:
“Protection is a false god, a false hope and, ironically, the kind of crooked promise that the supposedly corrupt ranks of the political establishment surrounding him [Trump] are supposed to offer a hopeful people.
“It will not in truth make America great again, even if it succeeds for a few years in protecting Americans against economic change, the very market forces that made this bustling entrepreneurial creative society the greatest economic power on earth.”
The Times noted that Trump wants “every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs” to “benefit American workers and American families”. Such a “promise of prosperity and strength through ‘protection’” is, said the paper, “troubling.”
The Financial Times did not believe he could satisfy his pledges to people whose jobs had been destroyed by globalisation: “If his economic efforts end at the standard Republican fare of slashing regulations and tax — perhaps flavoured with a bit of protectionism — the states of the rust belt, which carried Mr Trump to victory, will see little of the benefit.”
And its conclusion about his likelihood in pulling it off was wholly sceptical: “National leadership is not real estate. President Trump must do much __more than cut good deals for America.”
The Daily Telegraph was also unimpressed with “an unsettling speech that seemed to presage the emergence of an inward-looking, isolationist America.”
It commented: “The democratic world will be a poorer and __more dangerous place if the US retreats from the responsibilities and obligations that have been accepted by every president since the Fifties.”
And the Daily Mail registered its “huge doubts about his protectionism, which can only cause harm. We simply do not believe his claim that ‘protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.’”
But the Daily Express and the Sun were cautiously optimistic. The former saw Trump’s presidency (plus Brexit) as “a massive triumph for democracy. For the first time in years many ordinary people, both in Britain and in America, have found that they have got what they voted for.”
It was pleased that the “progressive left-leaning programme which seemed woven in to western democracy is now being unravelled.”
But the Express did concede that there may not necessarily be a positive outcome and “many are understandably fearful for the future.”
The Sun had no time “for the tearful handwringing here and in America” about a man “elected fair and square under the US system... it is foolish, divisive and utterly pointless for protesters to pretend he is ‘not our president’.
It thought “his economic plans — lower taxes, less regulation and vast and long overdue spending on infrastructure — may well keep and create jobs and kick-start growth... Plenty will write him off. But they wrote Reagan off too — before he changed the world.”
However, the majority viewpoint was surely represented by Matt’s pocket cartoon on the Telegraph front page. After waking up, a woman says to her husband: “Open the curtains and see if the world is still there.”