Pictures of Donald Trump sitting in a New York courtroom accompanied countless front-page stories about the first-ever criminal trial of a sitting or former U.S. president.
This coverage was not limited to the United States. Media outlets around the world have been reporting on the story, commenting on the man who wants to return to the White House and the accusations against him.
Mr. Trump denies 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a $130,000 payment made by his lawyer to buy the silence of an adult film star just before the 2016 election. She alleges that they had an affair; he denies the story.
So how is the historic trial covered, from Beijing to Rome? We interviewed our colleagues at BBC Monitoring, which monitors and analyzes media around the world.
The “SleepyDon” trial poses unprecedented problems for the United States (China)
By Tom Lam, BBC Monitoring China specialist
Chinese media have covered Mr. Trump’s trial, but it has not featured as prominently in the news as one might expect. It nevertheless presented the media with another opportunity to showcase what is seen as the chaos and polarization of American politics.
Reports in English focusing on the facts of the case. The English-language edition of the official Xinhua news agency noted that Donald Trump was the first former president to face a criminal trial. It also quoted the accused describing the trial as “political persecution” and saying the country was “failing.” China Daily, the English-language state newspaper, focused on jury selection, during which more than 50 of the first 96 potential jurors were excused after saying they could not be fair.
The state-affiliated national newspaper, The Paper, provided infographics and a timeline of the trial, and cited U.S. surveys as showing polarized views on the matter among American voters. He also addressed conflicting information regarding the possible impact on the November general election.
State-run news service China News Service (CNS) cited “unprecedented problems” facing the US justice system if Mr Trump wins in November but is also convicted.
The nationalist daily Global Times cited high interest rates, inflation and the Middle East crisis as illustrating Mr. Trump’s view that the world had spiraled out of control under the Biden administration.
But the official tabloid did not spare the Republican either. On April 16, he published a colorful report focusing on reports that he had fallen asleep in court, posting a meme ridiculing him as “#SleepyDon.”
“Hypnotized and alarmed” – Latin America
By Pascal Fletcher, BBC Monitoring specialist for Latin America, Miami
From Mexico to Cuba to Argentina, media coverage reflects the keen interest with which political events in the United States are followed south of the border. Many articles about the Trump trial have emphasized its “historic” nature.
Most news reports made a point of publishing striking photos of a stern-looking Trump sitting in what the media highlighted as the “charged dock” – this was likely to be seen as a fair justice by many of its detractors in Latin America.
The mere possibility of another Trump presidency is both fascinating and potentially alarming for many Latin American leaders, governments and corporations who remember vividly his scathing anti-migrant comments and what they saw as a barely concealed contempt for struggling developing countries during his previous term. White House.
The Latin American news site Infobae, based in Argentina, published a detailed article on the “Colombian judge who will have the last word in the trial against Donald Trump”, noting that Judge Juan Merchan had “not flinched in declaring silence against Trump.
Some Latin American reports were commented on, such as left-wing Mexican daily La Jornada which said Mr Trump was “accused not of being a savior and defender of his country as he says, but of trying to concealing payments to a porn star who sought to silence an illicit sexual relationship.”
The major Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo took a clearly anti-Trump stance in an April 16 editorial titled “Trump and the Unthinkable,” which questioned a scenario in which he was imprisoned and later pardoned as president. He urged American voters to avoid this scenario at the polls.
“Fabricated case” – Russia
By Andrey Vladov, BBC Monitoring Russia specialist, London
A pro-Trump bias was evident in much of the media coverage. In the main newscast of state television Rossiya 1, the presenter used the Russian slang word “bespredel”, which roughly translates to total anarchy and abuse of power, in reference to the trial and other criminal charges filed against Trump.
The legal proceedings have been systematically linked to the race for the White House by several media outlets. Olga Skabeyeva, host of Rossiya 1’s political show 60 Minutes, said the only chance Trump’s enemies had of defeating him in the elections was to imprison him. “In this regard, a case was fabricated regarding a bribe for the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels,” Skabeyeva concluded.
In the government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Igor Dunayevsky writes: “Democratic politicians do not hide their hope that the hunt for Donald Trump will prevent him from participating in the 2024 elections.”
Russian state media have consistently ridiculed the current US president as “senile” and someone who is not really in control of events. Donald Trump, on the other hand, had a much easier time with the pro-Kremlin media.
“Far-fetched indictment” – Europe
Laura Gozzi, digital journalist Europe, London
Across the Atlantic, an editorial in Switzerland’s Temps called the indictment far-fetched, questioning whether the revelation of an alleged affair with Stormy Daniels would have actually influenced voters in the 2016 election, given what they already knew about Mr. Trump.
“As he once again solicits the vote of Americans, it would be distressing if Donald Trump responded only for the falsification of accounting documents in New York and not for the attack on the Capitol and against American democracy,” we can read .
The New York reporter for the left-wing Italian newspaper Il Manifesto described the spectacle outside the courthouse and concluded with a pointed remark that it all constituted a “hypnotic reiteration of normalization, or reduction to a phenomenon of a phenomenon, of the Trump threat.
Opinion writer Jędrzej Bielecki took a broader view in the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita. He said the trial would be a “spectacular example of the strength of the rule of law in America, to which, at least in theory, everyone, the powerful and the weak, must respond.”
