Newcastle - you are right the first 'European Leader' to congratulate him was Le Pen.
Newcastle – his victory speech, unlike most of the time, was read from a teleprompter. How long will that last. The man has little discipline, and self control and, according to his biographers, the attention span on a gnat on Benzedrine. Its one reasonable speech set against hundreds of rants.
A quick look at the stats shows that Hiliary didn’t get the overwhelming support of Hispanics and that the young, whilst voting for her, gave a lot of votes to the minor candidates. Even against Trump she did less well with blacks, Hispanics and the young than Obama.
She had hugely more campaign money than Trump, a very much larger national organization as well as overwhelming media support. Her policies and her style/character were not winners. Nearly half registered Democrats preferred a disheveled old man to her and ignored that he voiced real concerns from those who have lost out. Weak candidate – no matter how many boxes her cv ticked.
A smart banker made an interesting comment this evening about a US that might want to retreat from engagement with the world: “Nature hates a vacuum”. In other words if the US retreats who or what do you think will replace it. Someone else said: “people whose concerns are real, but whose understanding of the facts is not, whose policies are not realistic and who are convinced that everyone else is wrong.”
The Republicans have kept both the Senate and the House so they will be able to stack the Supreme Court with judges who want to reverse R v. Wade and marriage equality.
Like a lot of Brexit – slogans are one thing – implementation is quite another matter and a lot of his ideas will be found to have unacceptable/unintended consequences if implemented.
Horus, the UK response was not as you implied. The UK government (according to Aus TV was silent for a prolonged period and at last made a comment well after the others. Maybe their planning for Trump was as good as for Brexit or was Boris out on the town.
Newcastle – re the Pope. You forget that they clashed swords 4 or 5 months ago. The Pope’s comment was: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel,” and Trump’s response wasn’t pretty. No love lost there. Their comment after the election could be read as ironical: “so that the Lord illuminate him and sustain him in the service of his homeland,
naturally, but also of the peace and wellbeing of the world.” “I believe that today it is needed for everyone to work to change the global situation, which is a situation of serious laceration and grave conflict.” Surely asking for continued international engagement and positive solutions – not just “America first”.
After Augustus the Roman Empire survived 50 years of raving lunatic Emperors only to have its best 200 years ahead of it.
