Like many international outlets, Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, remarked on the contrast between Trump’s love for the limelight and his precarious legal status in an article headlined, “The courtroom, his new stage.”
Any normal person would dread a day like this, Belgium’s De Morgen newspaper said. “Trump himself, however, seems to be enjoying being back where he wants to be: the center of attention.”
Sweden’s Expressen tabloid newspaper managed to find a local angle and interviewed Peter Nyman, 55, a security guard from the town of Mjölby who works at Trump campaign rallies and supports his policies.
The website of The Indian Express was covering the news with live updates and summed up the historic weight of Tuesday’s hearing: “Among 160 years of presidential scandals, Donald Trump stands alone.”
The Trump case even made the Vatican News’ daily French-language podcast — although it was the third listed item after new U.S. bases in the Philippines and oil exports resuming from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey.
Opinion polls suggest Trump was broadly unpopular across the world throughout his time in office, with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol raising fears for the future of U.S. democracy.
But some global supporters ensured that opinion was split over whether his arrest represented the renewed vigor of American leadership on the global stage or was another example of U.S. decline.
Chinese commentators were among the most savage in their verdict on the Trump case, painting it as an indictment of American democracy as a whole.
Wang Wen, a professor at Renmin University of China, said in an op-ed in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post on Tuesday that China was “chuckling” at the irony of the U.S. holding democracy summits while putting a former president on trial.
“The generation of young [Chinese] people who shouted ‘Long live President Wilson’ at the end of World War I, and the idealistic generation who endorsed a ‘fight…
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