Donald Trump travels to Las Vegas to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Trump International Casino, a day after calling The Wall Street Journal “garbage propaganda directed by an immigrant named Rupert Murdoch, who at 85 should be in a nursing home.” The man bringing together Trump and Putin is Silvio Berlusconi.
That’s how Spanish daily El Mundo imagines Trump’s first days in the White House. Writer Pablo Pardo’s whimsical envisioning of a Trump presidency begins with a trip to Mexico, where the new leader of the free world and his Vice President Ted Cruz announce that the Department of Homeland Security will create a safe zone for any companies willing to help bankroll a 3,145-kilometer-long wall stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic. When The Wall Street Journal reports that not a single company has stepped forward, and that banks have turned down a $2.1 billion loan request, “Trump tweets from the White House,” calling the bankers “idiots and lightweights.”
Cartoon: Ricardo for El Mundo
El Mundo‘s cautionary fable is among a bounty of foreign-press coverage of the U.S. presidential election as Monday’s crucial Iowa caucus approaches, to be shortly followed by New Hampshire and other key state primaries. The world is most definitely watching what has become an almost surreal race for the White House, and between now and November’s general election, Worldcrunch will deliver a regular sampling of global coverage from all languages and corners of the world.
Here’s this week’s international roundup:
Marc Bassets writes in Madrid daily El País that the rise of the candidates Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders reflects not the American dream, but the “American nightmare, the permanent fear of falling into the abyss” among many older, white, working-class Americans.
Italian daily Il Foglio deconstructs the unlikely rise of Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders. Mattia Ferraresi writes that despite appearances, the rumpled Vermont senator is the “anti-narrator” candidate. “Not only does he invariably repeat a not-very-innovative message (summed up as “the rich are screwing us”), but he always says it in the same way, with the same exact words, the same clothes, the same messy hair.”
Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald writes that “Bernie Sanders may do an Obama on Hillary Clinton.” Anne Summers asserts that the most “shocking news” coming out of the presidential race in the last week has nothing do with Donald Trump but is instead the surprisingly strong Sanders poll numbers in key early primary states. “Never in a million years could Clinton have thought that she would be fighting primary-to-primary in her own party with a surging male competitor who is older, more left-wing and more likeable than she is,” Summers writes.
Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter asks, “Who is the politician Donald Trump? A very rich populist from Manhattan with business acumen? Or a measured demagogue with a fascist perception of humanity?” Correspondent Björn af Kleen followed Trump during campaign stops in New Hampshire, Iowa and Florida. At one point, Kleen recounts shouting a question to Trump, who answers, “Great.” Kleen writes sarcastically that many things will be “great” if Trump wins, “like the wall he wants to build to keep Mexican migrants out.” Perhaps the piece’s most noteworthy nugget is an enlarged photo taken by photographer Lotta Härdelin showing Trump’s notes in which he has written, “ISLAM IS VIOLENCE.”
In Mexico’s Milenio newspaper, Fey Berman wonders whether the Latino vote will prove decisive, with 28 million eligible voters. She cites pollster Sylvia Manzano as saying that while most Latinos live in U.S. states that are either clearly Republican or clearly Democratic, they could prove decisive — if they turn out. Abstention is traditionally high among Hispanics, she says. Moreover, personal interest is a greater driver of political support than migrant issues, and research shows there’s no assurance Latinos will mobilize in mass against Trump’s anti-migration rhetoric.
