Obama-Trump meeting 'less awkward': White House1:25
U.S. President Barack Obama's Oval Office meeting with his elected successor, Donald Trump, was "less awkward" than some might have expected, according to White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
President-elect Donald Trump pictured during his meeting with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Picture: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
AS AMERICANS prepare for life under President Donald Trump, the world continues to react to the fallout with some already speculating how the next four years will turn out.
The President-elect, who stormed to victory over rival Hillary Clinton in this week’s election, did what most thought was impossible.
So it’s little surprise that most of the reaction has been one of shock, largely from the majority of the media which didn’t expect Mr Trump to win.
The Washington Post has already started speculating on the changes a Trump administration will bring to the nation’s capital.
“Washington began its transition of power on Wednesday as the ascendancy of President-elect Donald Trump promised a seismic shift in nearly every facet of the capital city, from military and executive agencies to federal courts and financial and political establishments,” one editorial read.
It also reveals how Trump’s resurgent Republican Party has planned “an aggressive and sweeping program to systematically dismantle Obama’s policies and to usher in a new era of conservative governance.”
IN MOURNING
The New York Times tipped Mr Trump to win as the votes began to roll in on election day.
The sense of loss has been huge.
President Barack Obama meets President-elect Donald Trump during their first meeting at the White House. Picture: Pablo Martinez MonsivaisSource:AP
Writing in The Times, Lindy West, a columnist for The Guardian, reveals how she got up on election day and burst into tears.
“Tears spattered the inside of my glasses, dripped from my lips, and left mascara-tinged rosettes blooming black in my cereal milk,” she wrote.
But she reveals she wasn’t crying because Ms Clinton would lose, although that would come later.
Instead she wrote it was because of the look of professional respect and pride Ms Clinton’s husband Bill had as the Democrat nominee cast her ballot.
While Ms Clinton’s lost was monumental for womankind, West also revealed how it demonstrated the limitlessness of human endurance.
‘WE’RE WRECKS’
Done. Over. Donald Trump’s Here. Goodbye.
The headline on a Denver Post opinion peace seemed to sum up the mood of the liberal elitists who are ‘wrecks’.
“So he won. The nation takes a deep breath. Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president,” Garrison Keillor writes.
“We liberal elitists are wrecks. The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting ‘Lock her up’ — we elitists just stood and clapped. Nobody chanted ‘Stronger Together.’ It just doesn’t chant.”
A selection of the front pages of the British national newspapers showing the reaction following Donald Trump’s shock US presidential victory in London. Picture: Benjamin Fathers/AFPSource:AFP
Keillor goes on to write that ‘the Trumpers’ never actually expected their guy to win and that “the uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones and they will not like what happens next.”
He also writes how Mr Trump was a cruel candidate who won on fear and bile and expected him to become the most intensely disliked president since Hoover.
“His children will carry the burden of his name. He will never be happy in his own skin. But the damage he will do to our country — who knows? His supporters voted for change, and boy, are they going to get it,” he writes.
‘I’VE HEARD ENOUGH OF THE WHITE MALE RAGE’
In an opinion peace for The Guardian, Hadley Freeman acknowledges that America’s white working classes have suffered, but that they fell for Mr Trump’s racist and sexist messages.
The ‘Grab them by the p***” comment should have put women voters off the Republican nominee, she writes.
But instead off putting white women off, they voted for him in droves.
The article, headline “I’ve heard enough of the white male rage narrative” argues that while there is genuine anger from working class men about the state of Middle America, “48% of those who earn more than $250,000 and 49% of white college graduate voters chose Trump.”
Freeman goes to argue that while the grievances of enraged voters deserve to be listened to, “understanding them is different from indulging them, and the media and politicians — in the US and UK — have for too long conflated the two, encouraging the white victim narrative and stoking precisely the kind of nasty, race-baiting campaigns that led to Brexit and Trump.”
Construction for the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump is underway in front of the White House in Washington, DC. Picture: Nicholas Kahm/AFPSource:AFP
‘A TRAGEDY’
The New Yorker labelled Mr Trump’s win ‘An American tragedy’ while calling it a trump for “nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism.”
“Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy,” David Remnick writes.
He goes on to say how come January 20, the US see a change from the first African-American President “ a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit — and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy.”
It induces “both revulsion and profound anxiety,’ he writes.
‘THE KLAN WON’
The mood of the anti-Trump brigade was perhaps best summed up in an open letter Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin wrote to his daughter Roxy following the election result.
In the letter, which appeared in Vanity Fair, and has since gone viral, the mastermind behind The West Wing writes how something happened he couldn’t protect her from.
“It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the first time that a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn has,” the letter reads.
Sorkin goes on to say how the victory wasn’t just one for Mr Trump but for all his supporters including the Klan won, white nationalists, sexists, racists and buffoons.
“Hate was given hope. Abject dumbness was glamorized as being “the fresh voice of an outsider” who’s going to “shake things up,” he writes.
