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The world wakes up to Trump

By Nahal Toosi
07/22/16 07:28 AM EDT

Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention drew largely negative reactions from much of the rest of the world on Friday, with some labeling it "apocalyptic," "dystopian" and a "horror story."

One writer for Britain's The Guardian wrote that "the ability of this demagogue to play the crowd, switching its anger on and off like a tap, carries too many echoes of the past century to ignore."

The Republican presidential nominee went into the speech having already bewildered much of Europe by suggesting that the United States should ignore its NATO obligations and not always automatically aid a fellow alliance member under attack.

Trump painted a portrait of a U.S. under siege — by crime, illegal immigrants, Islamist terrorists and a rigged political system.

"Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it," the real estate mogul declared.

Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and Russian political dissident who has run afoul of the Kremlin, tweeted in response: "I’ve heard this sort of speech a lot in the last 15 years and trust me, it doesn’t sound any better in Russian."

Elected officials around the world stayed out of the opinion fray, following the normal diplomatic conventions of avoiding comment on another country's internal politics, so much of the reflecting was left to the media.

Russia's news organizations, which are heavily influenced by the government of President Vladimir Putin, appeared to go easy on Trump, who has spoken favorably of the Russian leader.

RT, a Kremlin-backed news organization, gave a detailed rundown of Trump's speech with extensive quotations.

Britain's Financial Times dubbed the speech "Donald Trump's Evening in America" — a dark counterpart to the optimistic "morning in America" slogan of the late President Ronald Reagan.

Others in the U.K. sought silver linings. Simon Jenkins wrote of Trump in The Guardian: "A jolt of realpolitik from an isolationist Republican would be no bad thing."

The headline in The Irish Times story on Trump said he "plays to America's fears."

In China, a country Trump has repeatedly bashed over its trade practices, the state-run Xinhua news organization wrote a careful summary of the real estate mogul's speech.

But even its account pointed out that Trump "again failed to provide any detailed policies to explain how he would manage to realize all his promises."

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-convention-speech-world-reaction-226007?lo=ap_b1