Daily Trump: EU frets, Le Pen gushes, US roils

EU foreign ministers will meet informally in Brussels on Sunday to discuss the potential international policy consequences of Donald Trump's imminent ascension to the US presidency. While riling up the right with racist and xenophobic pronouncements, the US's top Republican also made a populist pitch against schemes like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP), calling it bad for America. Many in the European Union have expressed similar fears, saying TTIP would undermine EU labor and environmental standards, bringing them down to US levels.

While the diplomats prepared to meet in Brussels, French fringe leader Marie Le Pen praised Trump's unlikely win last week on an 18th-century technicality. Le Pen, who leads the anti-immigrant National Front, said she hoped voters in France would give her a similar victory next year and send her to the Elysee Palace. On Saturday, Le Pen said she had contacted Trump about working with his team.

"If I can draw a parallel with France, then, yes, I wish that in France, also, the people up-end the table, the table around which the elites are dividing up what should go to the French people," Le Pen told Britain's Andrew Marr Show, according to a BBC translation.

On Saturday, another fringe figure, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, paid a visit to Trump at his eponymous tower in Manhattan. Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said the men had held a "very productive" meeting. "They absolutely had an opportunity to talk about freedom and winning and what this all means for the world," she said.

'Not my president'

Americans have taken to the streets in growing numbers since it became apparent that Trump would claim the presidency. Though he lost the popular vote and received the support of just 25 percent of eligible voters (18 percent of the population), Trump's ascension was assured by the US's Electoral College. The constitutional quirk weights states by population and awards candidates votes accordingly; by managing narrow-margin victories in a handful of states, Trump took the White House.

On Saturday, more than 10,000 people marched in Manhattan, many chanting: "Trump is not my president." In Los Angeles, 10,000 more people turned out for a march in the city's downtown after a Friday night of protests that ended in several hundred arrests. And thousands more marched peacefully in Chicago, walking past Trump's skyscraper, which advertises the developer-cum-president's name in giant letters.

The Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 200 incidents of apparently Trump-inspired racial or ethnic harassment in the three days following Tuesday's election. And more than 47,000 people have signed an SPLC petition urging Trump to clearly distance himself from hate Groups.

mkg/tj (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)