Trump’s America first leads to fears of America cursed

Israeli papers, which do not publish on Saturday, are able to cover the inauguration of new US President Donald Trump with a unique scope, encompassing both the swearing-in with all its pomp and the ensuing mass protests the next day by some million women (and many men) marching in protest around the world, and the newly minted president tackling his first important issue – sparring with the press over crowd sizes.

As the major Israeli papers take advantage of that, they shrink into their own particular slant, though there are also signs of an attempt to push past the idee fixe, with some elements of Israel Hayom and Haaretz engaged in a freaky Friday switch.

For populist Yedioth Ahronoth, that means big pictures, big smiles and big angry signs – with a modicum of substance. For liberal broadsheet Haaretz – a bastion of the intellectual elite – it means broadcasting misgivings and taking yet another hard look at what the new president will mean for Israel, though there isn’t much new under the sun. Lastly, for free daily Israel Hayom, owned by GOP ubermacher Sheldon Adelson, which has been unflinching in its support for Trump well before he earned the Republican nomination, it means unabashed joy and crowing about the changes underfoot with the new leader of the free world.

Actually, no, it doesn’t. At least not totally. While the headlines in the tabloid telegraph a sense of happily celebrating what it calls the “dawning of a new era” – the “Trump era” – the feeling does not fully trickle down into the fine print of editor Boaz Bismuth, dispatched to Washington to cover the events.

Bismuth isn’t one to be extra critical of Trump, but following the president’s speech, even he is forced to wrestle with the sinews of darkness running through the address, albeit couching it in language that will still please his bosses.

Headlining his main story on the inauguration speech “Patriotic address,” Bismuth calls Trump “the most original and unique president in the country’s history,” which is one way to put what Trump is. He also notes high up that the speech drew the ire of those who saw in it “shades of racism, aggressiveness, calls for divisiveness, being cut off from reality, violence, a return to the 30s,” even adding that some pointed out similarities between his speech and that of Batman villain Bane.

And while lower down he writes that the speech (which the paper translates into Hebrew in full) was a “positive one,” even his praise is tinged with criticism.

“In the decades I’ve been in this business I’ve covered protests, revolutions, wars, elections, funerals of important people – but the swearing-in ceremony of the American president has a strength that is hard to find anywhere else. True, there were things in the address that were not pleasant, but that’s exactly what Donald Trump is good at: Finding a problem and fixing it,” he writes.

Over at Haaretz, there’s no need to hem and haw. With a front page showing a scowling Trump preparing to deliver his speech. Washington correspondent Amir Tibon notes in his lede that “already on his first day as president, Trump was caught in strong public opposition.”

Columnist Chemi Shalev, who spent the last several years as the paper’s man in Washington, offers a look at the darker corners of Trump’s “America First” speech and explains why they left him worried, and why others should be unnerved as well.

“’America First! America First!’ he cried, unashamedly and unabashedly, despite the fact that he is well aware of the negative historical connotations of the term, especially for Jews. This is the lesson for all those who cheer Trump’s disdain for political correctness: it also means that the sensibilities of Jews and other minorities are subservient to the will of the leader and the needs of his propaganda,” he writes. “Right wing Jewish nationalists, in Israel and America, may applaud Trump’s unequivocal pledge to wipe radical Islamic terrorism off the face of the earth and may cheer the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, but they should remember: If ‘America First’ is your only commandment, changing circumstances could make Israel pay the price as well. America, as Trump said, over all else.”

However, another column by Asaf Ronel posits a less pessimistic view of the speech.

“It’s hard not to agree with Trump that about the dysfunctional way, to put it mildly, that globalization operates. The new relationships that Trump promises to create in the international arena can, in theory, right some of this imbalance,” he writes. “For example, if the confrontation with China does not escalate into a trade war, and from there to a military conflict, Trump’s uncompromising approach could force Beijing to compromise on its own economic policies, which are intended to guarantee high economic growth at the expense of other nations’ economies. Trump’s idea of bringing back lost manufacturing jobs to America is a joke, but maybe by applying pressure in the right places he could lead to the creation of new jobs and make American industry great again.”

The paper doesn’t offer a ton in terms of coverage of the women’s marches, but Tibon does make sure to write that that it seemed more people showed for the protests than for the inauguration, an idea that apparently set off a nerve in Trump and his administration, which went on a rampage against the press Saturday for accurately reporting poor numbers at the swearing-in.

Yedioth, whose coverage is most made up of pictures, also pokes at the new president by juxtaposing an overhead picture of the 2017 inauguration with Obama’s in 2009, when the National Mall was actually filled.

The paper offers nearly as much coverage of the protests as of the inauguration, and the write-up is mostly supportive.

“This was a march of America the heterogenous: blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians, pairs of women hugging, pairs of men holding hands, mixed couples. White and angry America, which went for Trump, dispersed after the inauguration and left the field for a different America,” the paper’s Orly Azulay notes.

The coverage also extends to a much smaller march in Tel Aviv outside the US Embassy, which protesters hope will stay where it is.

“Trump is bad for Israel. He also wants to move the embassy to Jerusalem. Instead of calming tensions, that will spark tensions,” one protester is quoted saying.

Israel Hayom’s coverage of the protests make it seem like that violent future is already here, thanks to the anti-Trump marchers.

While the paper’s coverage does note that the numbers may have eclipsed those who came to the inauguration, the paper also includes a picture of a limousine on fire in Washington and makes sure to link violent protests on Friday to the women’s marches on Saturday.

“The protests against Trump began even on Friday, when hundreds of people protested just a few kilometers from the site of the inauguration,” the paper reports. “The protest turned violent when a few dozen demonstrators smashed windows of business and the police were forced to use riot dispersal methods. No fewer than 100 people were arrested.”