Achi news desk-
Pictures of Donald Trump sitting in a New York courtroom have accompanied countless front-page stories about the first-ever criminal trial of a president or former president of the United States.
That coverage is not limited to the United States. The world’s media has carried the story – attention to the man who wants to return to the White House and the case against him.
Mr Trump denies 34 charges of falsifying business records in relation to a $130,000 payment made by his lawyer to buy the silence of an adult film star shortly before the 2016 election. She claims they had an affair; he denies the story.
So how does the historic trial fit in, from Beijing to Rome? We asked our colleagues at BBC Monitoring, who track and analyze media around the world.
The ‘SleepyDon’ trial presents unprecedented problems for the US – China
By Tom Lam, BBC Monitoring China expert
Chinese media have covered Mr Trump’s trial but it has not been as prominent on the news agenda as might be expected. Still, it offered another opportunity for the media to show what is seen as the chaos and polarization of US politics.
English reports focused on the facts of the case. The English edition of the state news agency Xinhua highlighted that Donald Trump was the first former president to face a criminal case. It also quoted the accused as describing the case as “political persecution” and saying the country was “failing”. China Daily, the state-run English newspaper, focused on jury selection, when more than 50 of the first 96 potential jurors were excused after saying they could not be fair.
State-facing outlet home-facing The paper provided infographics and timelines of the trial, and cited US polls as showing polarized views on it among US voters. It also detailed conflicting reports about the potential impact on the general election in November.
The state-owned China News Service (CNS) spoke of “unprecedented problems” facing the US judicial system if Mr Trump were to win in November but also be convicted.
Nationalist daily Global Times cited high interest rates, inflation and the crisis in the Middle East as demonstrating Mr Trump’s idea that the world has spun out of control under the Biden administration.
But the state-run tabloid did not spare the Republican either. He provided a colorful report on 16 April focusing on reports that he had fallen asleep in court, posting a meme mocking him as “#SleepyDon”.
‘Mesmerised and terrorized’ – Latin America
By Pascal Fletcher, BBC Monitoring Latin America specialist, Miami
From Mexico and Cuba to Argentina, media coverage reflected the keen interest with which political events in the United States are followed south of the border. Multiple stories on Trump’s trial emphasized its “historic” nature.
Most of the reports made a point of publishing striking pictures of a stern-looking Trump sitting in what outlets pointed out was “the dock” – this was likely to be seen as righteous justice by many ‘to critics in Latin America.
The mere prospect of another Trump presidency is shocking and possibly frightening to many Latin American leaders, governments and societies who vividly recall his scathing anti-immigrant comments and what they saw as rare ridicule his cover for struggling developing countries during his previous term in the White House.
Argentinian Latin American news website Infobae published an extensive story on the “Colombian judge who will have the last word in the case against Donald Trump”, noting that Judge Juan Merchan “did not hesitate to order an injunction against Trump”.
Some of the Latin American reports slipped into commentary, such as the Mexican left-wing daily La Jornada which said that Mr Trump “has been accused not of being the savior and protector of his country as he says, but of trying to hide payments to a porn star who tried silence an unlawful sexual encounter”.
Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo took a distinctly anti-Trump stance in an April 16 editorial titled “Trump and the unthinkable” that raised questions about a scenario in which he was jailed and then pardoned himself as president. He urged American voters to avoid that scenario at the ballot box.
‘Case done’ – Russia
By Andrey Vladov, BBC Monitoring Russia expert, London
A pro-Trump bias was apparent in much of the coverage. On the main evening news on state television Rossiya 1, the presenter used the Russian slang word “bespredel”, which roughly translates to total lawlessness and abuse of power, in reference to the trial and criminal charges others faced by Trump.
Court cases were constantly linked to the race for the White House by several outlets. Olga Skabeyeva, host of Rossiya 1’s political talk show 60 Minutes (60 Minutes), said that the only chance Trump’s enemies had to defeat him in the election was to imprison him. “In this regard, a case was made for bribery for the silence of the porn actress Stormy Daniels,” concluded Skabeyeva.
In the government-owned daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Igor Dunayevsky wrote: “Democratic politicians do not hide their hopes that the hunt for Donald Trump will prevent him from participating in the 2024 elections.”
Russian state media have consistently mocked the current US president as “senile” and a person who is not really in control of events. Donald Trump on the other hand has had a much easier ride on pro-Kremlin outlets.
‘Distant indictment’ – Europe
Laura Gozzi, Europe’s digital correspondent, London
An editorial in Le Temps in Switzerland described the indictment as extraordinary, questioning whether the revelation of an alleged affair with Stormy Daniels would have really influenced voters in the 2016 election given what they already knew about Mr Trump.
“As he seeks the vote of Americans once again, it would be upsetting if Donald Trump responded only to the falsification of accounting documents in New York and not to the attack on the Capitol and against American democracy,” he said.
A New York reporter for Italy’s left-wing newspaper Il Manifesto described the show outside the court and concluded with pointed comment that it all added up to “a hypnotic repetition of the normalization, or reduction to a freak, of the threat of Trump “.
Opinion writer Jędrzej Bielecki took a broader view in the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita. He said the court case would be “a great example of the strength of the rule of law in America, which, theoretically at least, must answer for everyone, the powerful and the weakest”.
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