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The indictment of former President Donald Trump in New York City has sparked reactions around the world, from some Trump allies coming to his defense to U.S. adversaries pouncing on the development as a sign of American political chaos.
The Chinese government’s state-controlled news outlets have used the indictment to smear the image of U.S. democracy.
“U.S. risks sinking into disorder as Trump indicted, political system in disarray,” declared a headline atop an article published by Global Times, a paper run under the auspices of the ruling Communist Party in Beijing.
The article cited Chinese experts asserting that the indictment has “revealed the dysfunction of the American political system amid increasingly extreme political polarization, warning of the possibility of more violent protests from Trump’s followers.”
U.S. allies have been mostly cautious in their portrayals of the indictment and the potential impact it could have on upcoming U.S. elections, but some in Europe have expressed support for Mr. Trump.
Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, has urged Mr. Trump to “keep on fighting” as the former president faces a criminal indictment over an alleged hush money payment during his 2016 presidential campaign.
“We are with you,” Mr. Orban tweeted Monday in support of the former president.
The tweet featured a photograph of Mr. Orban and Mr. Trump smiling and shaking hands during a meeting at Mr. Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, estate last August. The far-right prime minister had traveled to the United States to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Texas.
Russian officials have been notably more reserved in their public reactions to the Trump indictment. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment during a press conference in Moscow on Friday.
“I don’t think this is a topic for us to comment on,” he told reporters. “These are internal U.S. processes that we do not consider necessary to comment on.”
Some Western European journalists, meanwhile, have cautioned that the developments in New York could trigger political unrest in the United States.
Paolo Mastrolilli, the North America bureau chief for the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica, asked Friday in a column whether the U.S. will hit with a wave of violence, or, if moderate Republicans will rally behind a different candidate for the 2024 presidential election, according to a translation by the news website Semafor.
Semafor separately noted a separate argument by Annett Meiritz, the U.S. correspondent for the German-language outlet Handelsblatt, who wrote that Mr. Trump’s “attack” on democracy is fueled even further by the indictment.
Chinese social media has run with that narrative.
A report by Business Insider maintained that the indictment triggered a flurry of memes by Chinese social media users calling Mr. Trump “Comrade Nation Builder” — a hero who’s strengthening China by embarrassing the United States.
The idea behind the “Comrade Nation Builder” nickname on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, is that Mr. Trump is an ally of China who went to Washington for the sole purpose of sabotaging America with wild antics and outrageous policies, according to the report by Business Insider’s Matthew Loh.
“Comrade Nation Builder, in the police station, in the courts, you must surely endure, we are waiting for you to retire so you can return and watch the sunset with us,” read one popular post on Friday, according to Mr. Loh, who added that the post featured a montage of artificial intelligence-generated images stitched together to show Mr. Trump retiring in China after having fulfilled his “mission.”
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