The people reacted with the Brexit and now they have reacted again. It is an alarm and the elites, both in the US and Europe, must heed the lesson and reconsider their policies both at home and abroad, experts told RT.
Donald Trump has shocked the world by upsetting the heavily favored Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States. Many European leaders have commented on his stunning victory.
READ MORE: Brexit, American-style: Trump supporters told political & journalist class 'where to go'
Marine Le Pen, a French politician and the president of the National Front (FN) said, "Americans have voted. They have rejected the status quo. They showed, through a decision which surprised those who believe situations are unchangeable, that the world moves, that the world changes and that movement is part of the life of nations. What happened last night was not the end of the world, it was the end of a world. Americans have been given the president they chose and not the one that a settled system wanted to make them validate, as if elections were nothing but a formality to satisfy appearances and conveniences.”
RT spoke to experts and discussed why nobody was expecting Trump’s victory and what consequences we can expect now.
Stelios Kouloglou, Greek MP, Syriza party, told RT that "nobody knows which of the promises of Mr. Trump will be implemented and respected or not."
"The general idea is that this is a historical day. Twenty-seven years ago we had the fall of the Berlin Wall. And the fall of the Berlin Wall gave the green light to the oligarchy during which one percent is getting richer and 99 percent are getting poorer. And this happened also in the US. And now the people are reacting – they reacted with the Brexit and now they have reacted again. It is an alarm. And the elites, both in the US and Europe, must take the lesson: change policies, implement policies that are profiting the people, the 99 percent, not the one percent. I am waiting for the European leadership to change course, not to implement the same policies that ended up in the election of Mr. Trump. Because if this is the case, then we will have more Trumps in Europe, like Marine Le Pen or Mr. Orban who is already in power in Hungary", he added.
Mary Dejevsky, writer and broadcaster, said she was completely surprised, "but at the same time I was probably one of the people who took Trump seriously from the beginning."
"I’ve seen the anti-establishment candidates before and watched how they are underestimated and not taken seriously regardless of whether they win or not. Actually, they do have arguments and Trump fits into a particular American tradition, not such as Hillary Clinton’s tradition, but something a bit older, a bit more visceral", she continued.
"My feeling was that either Clinton or Trump would probably be a one-term president. Simply, and maybe this sounds prejudiced in a way, because of their age. They are two of the oldest candidates ever to contest the presidency. And Trump will be seventy when he takes over. I have to say when Trump was speaking, when he gave his victory address, it didn’t sound to me like somebody who was being careful because they were looking towards a second term, which is often what first term president does, they feel much less constrained in the second term. There was nothing of that about Trump, which maybe to do with his character, maybe to do with where he comes from or maybe because he thinks he’s got this four years and he is going to do absolutely what he wants to do with them."
According to Beatrix Von Storch, MEP Alternative for Germany, "it is a huge, historic day."
"We’ve seen the American people voting the establishment basically out of office. And I think this gives us strong signal to the rest of the world. We can see these kinds of movements all over place. I think the media again got it wrong, as they got it wrong with the Brexit. They predicted the wrong result the whole time. They cannot believe what is going on because they are losing track, they are losing contact with the people and this is what we have seen. The people want something else. The people want a change in politics and now it is up to the Americans to give that signal to the world", she told RT.
Diether Dehm, MP from Die Linke, thinks that "the left candidate Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump, and it is a big mistake for the Democratic that they didn’t nominate Bernie Sanders."
"I think the main point is that the liberal elites sometimes only use the liberal sentences like a masqueraded for making war, for talking about human rights in other countries and wanting their gasoline. There is a problem that there is a big lie in the air. And Donald Trump gave the image of saying the truth, to be direct", he added.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.