World media shock and dismay at Trump win

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USA Today and New York Times front covers
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US papers are 'stunned' by Trump's win

Media across the world have reacted to Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election with a mixture of shock, disbelief and anxiety. There is also a large measure of uncertainty as to what the future holds.

In the US some heavyweight papers have published leader articles that are unprecedented in their contempt for the future president.

The New York Times says Mr Trump "is the most unprepared president-elect in modern history" and "has shown himself to be temperamentally unfit to lead a diverse nation of 320 million people".

The Washington Post sees little cause for optimism about the vote, recalling that Trump "has promised to deport millions, rip up trade agreements and international efforts to fight climate change, each of which would hurt many people".

The Los Angeles Times asks in its editorial "How did that happen?" The paper says "the campaign, and the candidate, played to the worst in America, and it has left the electorate scarred".

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The Los Angeles Times believed Mr Trump's campaign "played to the worst in America"

Liz Peek, explaining the surprise victory in FoxNews.com, says: "It's not that complicated. Average Americans, the men and women who work hard and play by the rules, decided to make their voices heard."

The conservative Breitbart News Network splashes several headlines welcoming Mr Trump across it's web pages, including: "Shock - and awesome: Movement of ordinary Americans stun global elite"; "Outsider candidate overcomes overwhelming odds to defeat establishment, Clinton".

However, it also carries a piece headlined: "I want to quit life: Hollywood 'devastated' after Trump win".

The Miami Herald says in an editorial: "The losers, still stunned, must acknowledge that Mr Trump managed to read the mood of much of the country better than they did, tapping into the frustrations of people who had come to believe that the government was no longer working on their behalf or even understood their problems."

Europe stunned

"How could this happen?" is a similar headline on the website of German daily Die Welt. It says Trump is as "unpredictable as a hurricane".

The main German public service news programme Tagesschau tries to provide an answer, saying Trump "owes his electoral victory mainly to white male voters" who voted for "the political outsider".

Image source, Tagesschau
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German news website Tagesschau's headline says "Trump will be US President"

The French business daily Les Echos is forthright in its assessment: "Racist, populist, male chauvinist, arrogant and unpredictable. We do not know what is most terrifying in the personality of Donald Trump."

The Washington correspondent of Spain's El Pais stresses that Trump "goes to the White House with massive support from white voters discontented with elites".

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Spain's El Pais believes that Trump's victory was delivered by the "massive support from white voters discontented with elites"

Papers in Italy agree, with La Stampa seeing the result as "a hurricane of discontent" that comes "from the belly of the nation".

Russia's state-run rolling-news TV channel Rossiya 24 carried Trump's victory speech live instead of its 0800 gmt news bulletin.

The station aired an animated graphic, showing Trump dancing ecstatically and making faces at Clinton, who is sitting despondently.

"The epic defeat of Hillary Clinton... is a resounding slap from the people to the US political elite" is how the official Rossiyskaya Gazeta paper sees it. "No less resounding than the slap that Britons earlier gave to their authorities at the referendum on EU membership".

World uncertainty

Chinese official commentaries say Trump's victory is a "major blow" to the US establishment.

"From the start, mainstream US media and elites looked down on Trump and described him as loose cannon," the Global Times says on its website.

"We cannot bank the future of Sino-US ties on his character," the paper adds. "Ultimately, it depends on our own strength to maintain China's interests."

The popular Chinese Sina Weibo microblog is dominated by discussion of Trump's win. #TrumpWins is currently one of the top 10 most used hashtags, and social media users are also widely posting messages containing #USElection.

Popular sentiment suggests that China knew Trump would win all along, with some users commenting that Geda, a "prophetic monkey", predicted on 3 November that Trump would win.

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Argentinean newspaper Clarin does not mince words calling Donald Trump "an emerging neo-fascist"

Latin American newspapers are surprised but also anxious about the news.

A front-page opinion piece on Argentina's Clarin calls Donald Trump "an emerging neo-fascist".

"The phenomenon is not a one-off," it continues. "It correlates with many European ultra-nationalist figures, and is growing at a serious moment for the world."

No expectation of change in Middle East

One recurring opinion across Arab-language media is that the result will mean little change in the Middle East, and in Syria in particular.

An analyst on pro-Syrian Al-Mayadin TV sums up the general feeling: "Wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya continued regardless of who was in charge... I have not noticed any change to allow us to say now that Republican policy will be worse or better for the Middle East".

BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.