The Guardian view on Donald Trump: years of living dangerously | Editorial
Donald Trump's election shook the world as no other event of 2016. His presidency is still four weeks away, so it would be wrong to pass a verdict on it before there is any evidence. Yet the world can be justifiably fearful. Mr Trump's cabinet picks, an overwhelmingly white male cohort of low tax and small government obsessives, climate change denying oilmen, and career soldiers, add to the dismay. But it is Mr Trump who matters. This week, the president-elect has revived the idea of a ban on Muslims entering the US and has given the green light to a new nuclear arms race. For Americans to choose someone with Mr Trump's prejudices and instincts remains as outrageous now as it did on 8 November. It will not be hard to stay shocked.
Never before has a candidate tried so hard to make America hate again. That's why the Trump election was bigger than Brexit, both in itself and because of its global impact. Never before has someone endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan prepared to enter the White House. Never before, if you believe the CIA, has a foreign power intervened so audaciously in a US election. The impact on America itself is already enormous. No elected president has been greeted with more overt hostility, more protests and, perhaps most important of all, more soul searching.
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