Headlines screaming “Deportations to begin” and “Markets sink as trade war looms” top a parody newspaper front page the Boston Globe posted on Saturday, with a scathing editorial denouncing Republican US presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s candidacy.
The mock-up, offering the Globe’s satirical view of the US under a Trump presidency, was set to run as the front page of the newspaper’s “Ideas” section, followed on page 2 of that section by the anti-Trump editorial.
The novel front-page spoof is designed to take Trump’s rhetoric and his policy positions to their “logical conclusion,” the editorial said.
Photo: AP
“It is an exercise in taking a man at his word,” the editorial said. “And his vision of America promises to be as appalling in real life as it is in black and white on the page.”
The editorial brands the billionaire businessman as a “demagogue,” whose own political vision is “profoundly un-American.”
It casts his closest rival for the Republican nomination, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, as “equally extreme” and urges Republicans, if possible at the party’s nominating convention in July, to draft a “plausible, honorable” alternative, suggesting US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan or former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
The mock Trump page was conceived and executed by the Globe’s editorial writers, columnists and commentary editors, who make up the newspaper’s editorial board, said Ellen Clegg, the newspaper’s editorial page editor.
Saying that she reports to Boston Globe publisher John Henry, Clegg added that the front-page parody “does not involve our newsroom.”
Clegg said she knows of no other such expression of political satire ever published by the Globe or any other major metropolitan daily in the US during her 30 years at the newspaper. However, it is reminiscent of the kind of parody regularly featured by the farcical online news outlet The Onion.
The mock front page envisions a host of political, financial and international scenarios, ranging from disturbingly surreal to darkly humorous, all playing on Trump’s real pronouncements about illegal immigration, Muslims, national security and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
A color photograph of Trump making a speech is centered near the top of the page under a banner headline reading: “Deportations to begin,” with a subhead reporting that Trump was calling for a tripling of immigration enforcement personnel as “riots continue.”
A top story on the page opens with the paragraph: “Worldwide stocks plunged again Friday, completing the worst month on record as trade wars with both China and Mexico seem imminent.”
Other mock entries include a story about unrest in the ranks of the US military as soldiers refuse orders to kill family members of Islamic State group militants, and the headline: “New libel law targets ‘absolute scum’ in press.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS