PRESS REVIEW - Friday, July 3: We look at the US papers' reactions as the country's 250-year celebration begins this Fourth of July weekend. The New York Times warns Europe's glaciers are melting rapidly because of recent heatwaves. Also, British papers are in a football frenzy ahead of their game against Mexico early on Monday. And, according to reports, Taylor Swift is celebrating her wedding this weekend.
The United States celebrates 250 years of independence this weekend as Fourth of July celebrations kick off. This milestone anniversary comes at a tumultuous time in US politics – and in the world more generally. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius is brutally honest about how he sees the US today, writing: "Today we resemble the imperial Britain of 1776 more than scruffy patriots who rebelled against it.” He calls the US a "nation with an appalling gap between rich and poor" and a nation in "late middle age showing signs of decline". He points the finger at a broken education system and unravelling social cohesion that makes people "feel like two nations rather than one." The conservative Washington Times is far more optimistic in its outlook. It celebrates all the inventions the US has given the world – refrigerators, national parks and rock and roll. US President Donald Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pens an opinion in which he says the US not only survived for 250 years but became the "freest, wealthiest and most powerful country in the world". He adds optimistically, “I believe that America’s best days are in front of us and not behind us”. Here in the Europe, the view is quite different. Der Speigel, the German weekly magazine, offers a cautiously optimistic article that wonders if American democracy, which has survived 250 years, can survive Trump: "US democracy is a tenacious beast but it has been riven by contradictions – which are never more apparent than in Trump’s America." The Guardian’s Ben Jennings offers a cynical cartoon: an updated version of German American painter Emmanuel Leutze’s Washington crossing the Delaware featuring Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr and his Vice-President JD Vance alongside bags of cryptocurrency and cash, his golf clubs, ICE and Melania Trump on a gilded boat.
