The World that express this sentiment is not a joke.
The US Presidency is an extremely important office - and one mistake will bring turmoil to the World.
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A salesclerk stands in front of flat-panel TVs showing Republican's front-runner candidate Donald Trump in a news program on the U.S. presidential election's Super Tuesday at an electronics store in Tokyo, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. After the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses in a dozen states, Trump and Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton had tightened their grasp on their party's presidential nominations. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
BRUSSELS (AP) — Following Donald Trump's breathtaking string of Super Tuesday victories, politicians, editorial writers and ordinary people worldwide were coming to grips Wednesday with the growing possibility the brash New York billionaire might become America's next president_a thought that aroused widespread befuddlement and a good deal of horror.
"The Trump candidacy has opened the door to madness: for the unthinkable to happen, a bad joke to become reality," German business daily Handelsblatt wrote in a commentary for its Thursday edition. "What looked grotesque must now be discussed seriously."
There was also glee from some Russian commentators at how American politics is being turned topsy-turvy in 2016. And in Latin America, Ecuador's president predicted a Trump win could boomerang and become a blessing to the continent's left.
However, the dominant reaction overseas to the effective collapse of the Republican Party establishment in the face of the Trump Train appeared to be jaw-dropping astonishment, mixed with dread at what may lie ahead.
"The meteoric rise of the New York magnate has left half the planet dumbfounded," wrote columnist Andrea Rizzi in Spain's leading newspaper, El Pais.
"To consider Donald Trump a political clown would be a severe misconception," said another European daily, Salzburger Nachrichten. If Trump is elected to the White House, the Austrian paper predicted, his ideas "would bring major dangers for the USA and the world ... basically a nationalist-chauvinist policy that would make America not great but ugly, and risk the stability of the international order."
Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, said the best word to describe Israeli feelings about Trump is "confusion."
There are certain parts of him that Israelis can relate to, such as his aversion to political correctness, his tough stance on Islamic terrorism and his call for a wall with Mexico to provide security, Gilboa said.
But others have been particularly jarring to Israelis, such as comments about Jews that many consider insensitive and his derision of U.S. Sen. John McCain's captivity in Vietnam.
"This is something that every Israeli would reject. It's a highly sensitive issue in a country where prisoners of war are heroes and people go out of their way to release them," he said.
Trump has drawn concern in China, but not a huge amount of attention despite Trump repeatedly invoking the Asian giant during his campaign to cite U.S. weakness that he would turn around, accusing Beijing of manipulating its currency, stealing American jobs and unfair competition.
Chinese may not be taking his comments too seriously because they believe he won't be elected or that he'd modulate his positions once elected, said Xiong Zhiyong, international relations expert at China Foreign Affairs University.
"If, hypothetically, Trump became the U.S. president and he held on to his stance and proposals made during the election, China-U.S. relations would be in big trouble in many aspects such as security and economics," he said. "In that case, the U.S. foreign relations policies will undergo a huge change."
Thuraya Ebrahim al Arrayed, a member of Saudi Arabia's top advisory body, the Shura Council, said a Trump presidency would be "catastrophic" and set the world back "not just generations, but centuries."
"We pray to God that a racist, politically incorrect personality does not win the election," she said. "How can he tell Muslim students going there to study he will shut the door in Muslim faces?"
Writing in the Financial Times of London, Martin Wolf summed up the mood of a good share of Europe's business and economic elite, arguing that it would be a "global disaster" if Trump, who won seven states in Tuesday's Republican contests, made it all the way to the Oval Office.
"Mr. Trump is a promoter of paranoid fantasies, a xenophobe and an ignoramus. His business consists of the erection of ugly monuments to his own vanity. He has no experience of political office. Some compare him to Latin American populists. He might also be considered an American Silvio Berlusconi, albeit without the charm or business acumen," Wolf wrote.
He also said Berlusconi, a former Italian prime minister and media tycoon, "unlike Mr. Trump never threatened to round up and expel millions of people."
Wolf's verdict: "Mr. Trump is grossly unqualified for the world's most important political office."
A Japanese online commentator used much the same language, and likened the Republican front-runner to the evil nemesis of wizard Harry Potter.
Trump's unexpected political rise reflects "elitism and opposition to globalization, but at its heart is a xenophobia and populism that comes from ignorance," said Masato Kimura, former London bureau chief for the conservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun. "Although this is another country's election, Japan's allies should raise their voices to help prevent the birth of a 'Voldemort' president in the United States."
In the Mexican newspaper Reforma, columnist Sergio Aguayo compared anti-Mexican sentiments unleashed by Trump to the anti-communist Red Scares of the 20th century, and accused Trump of igniting a "brown panic."
"We must answer again and again Donald Trump, and make the U.S. government understand that we're not willing to continue being pointed out as the only ones responsible for problems that are also caused by the United States," Aguayo wrote.
La Jornada, a leftist Mexican paper, ran a caricature of Trump wearing a "KKK" necktie and declaring, "I will make cremation ovens for the Mexicans and Muslims ... and they will pay for their construction!"
In the moderate and predominantly Muslim West African nation of Senegal, Mame Ngor Ngom, editor-in-chief of La Tribune, a weekly newspaper, expressed hope that in the final analysis, Americans will not be "so thoughtless" as to hand Trump their country's highest office.
"We think that the Americans won't vote for him. They already paid the consequences with George W. Bush. ... Donald Trump will fail," the Senegalese journalist predicted.
In Russia, some took delight in how messy U.S. politics have become.
The popularity of Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders, who took four states on Tuesday compared to the seven won by Hillary Clinton, "bears witness to the crisis of trust in such traditional clans" as the Bushes and the Clintons, wrote Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's upper house of parliament, in a post on Facebook.
According to Alexander Dugin, a Russian nationalist ideologue with close ties to the Kremlin, Trump "is sometimes disgusting and violent, but he is what he is. It is true America."
In Europe, where some also feel their nations are being submerged by waves of foreign migrants and violent Islamic radicalism is a real danger, not all have condemned Trump. Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France's far-right National Front, has said that if he were an American, he would cast his ballot for Trump. On Wednesday, Laurent Wauquiez, a French conservative lawmaker, said Trump's popularity is revealing of a general trend that has traversed the Atlantic.
"What it shows is that in democracies today, citizens no longer want people to tell them what they should think, what they should say. That's what makes Donald Trump seductive," Wauquiez told France 2 Television.
In the northern Indian city of Lucknow, one software company executive said he has been impressed by Trump's muscular rhetoric.
"Trump looks like a tough guy," said Rohitash Sharma. "He has clarity of idea, and he means business. He has advocated the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, if these improve the protection and safety of the country. He has a clear road map on how to protect his country from extremist forces."
Though no fan, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said a Trump presidential win could be a political gift to Latin America's left, which is recovering from a string of electoral defeats in Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela.
"The most convenient for Latin America is a Trump victory, because his rhetoric is so clumsy, so basic, that I think it would awaken reactions in Latin America," Correa told a group of radio journalists Monday. "I think a guy like him would be very bad for the U.S. (but) for the progressive movement in Latin America, it could be positive."
For weeks, a Canadian website has poked fun at Trump by inviting disaffected Americans to move to an island off Nova Scotia. On Super Tuesday, as the returns rolled in, searches for "How can I move to Canada" on Google spiked by more than 350% in four hours, Google editor Simon Rogers tweeted. A social media link posted by Toronto city councilman Norm Kelly that gives helpful directions on how to apply for Canadian citizenship received over 37,000 retweets.
Bruce Arthur, a Canadian sportswriter and political commentator, tweeted this after Super Tuesday: "To my American friends, I have an eight-person tent that I can set up in the forest behind my house but you may need your own air mattresses."
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Associated Press writers Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Geir Moulson in Berlin, George Jahn in Vienna, Aya Batrawy in Dubai, Danica Kirka in London, Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo, Jim Heintz in Moscow, Aron Heller in Jerusalem, Lori Hinnant in Paris, Rob Gillies in Toronto, Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City, Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow, India, Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador, and Babacar Dione in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.
On Wall Street, fears of a Trump presidency AFP Fri, 4 Mar 11:19 am GMT+8 At first glance, Donald Trump is everything Wall Street likes -- a billionaire whose real estate empire has provided huge business for banks, and whose luxury towers house the rich and famous.
Giveaway : $1,000 Cinema Movie Vouchers ! SG Offers Sponsored But his surprise success in the fight to win the Republican nomination for the US presidency has sent a chill over the heart of American capitalism.
The list of fears runs long: a president Trump could launch a trade war with China; he could increase taxes on the rich; he could interfere with the Federal Reserve over monetary policy; the White House's relations with Congress could break down completely.
"He scares the markets. He is a big uncertainty," said Greg Valliere, chief strategist for Horizon Investments. "The market does not like uncertainty."
Businesses are disconcerted by the off-the-cuff comments Trump renders about crucial business and economic issues almost daily since hitting the campaign trail last year.
On one side, he has denounced huge salaries for chief executives, the greed of bankers and tax advantages that benefit wealthy Wall Street fund managers.
He has menaced the huge population of undocumented immigrants that effectively keeps up the supply of low-wage workers for US businesses.
He attacks China and Japan for manipulating their currencies for trade advantage and threatens to start a trade war with China. At the same time, he has declared his opposition to two huge free-trade accords spanning the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
He has even leveled attacks at the titans of US businesses such as Ford and Apple because they manufacture outside the country as well as inside.
But on the other hand, Trump courts US industry leaders with promises of business tax cuts. He also praises the skills of fellow billionaire Carl Icahn, one of Wall Street's most successful activist investors, who stands out as one of Trump's few vocal backers on Wall Street.
- 'Mixed bag' platform -
"He doesn't fit into any particular economic mold, he's not a traditional conservative like Ronald Reagan," said Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
"His platform is really kind of a mixed bag of populist and isolationist types of policies that, he knows, will appeal to a lot of uninformed people."
Former White House nominee Mitt Romney, who ran the prominent investment house Bain Capital before entering politics, gave voice to the finance community's worries Thursday, warning that under Trump "the country would sink into a prolonged recession."
"A business genius he is not."
Perry pointed to one of Trump's more obvious "hypocrisies" -- having his own Donald J. Trump brand menswear collection manufactured in China even while blasting that country for cheap labor.
Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, said some of his clients appreciate Trump's position on cutting corporate taxes. But they also fear he could spark a trade war with China that could harm US businesses.
"We live in a globally connected economy," Low said.
So far, however, markets have not reacted to Trump's strong lead in the Republican White House race. Fund managers remain uncertain about his chances against the likely Democratic nominee, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Low said.
"Trump's success moving forward is likely to bring increased volatility," David Lafferty of Natixis Global Asset Management predicted.
Among bankers, the sentiment is generally anti-Trump. Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein last September pointed to the US president's power to unleash a nuclear weapon. "The image of Mr Trump with his finger on the button blows my mind," he said.
But most bankers contacted by AFP would not speak openly about their disdain for Trump, worried about possible reprisals.
"He is crazy, he has crazy policies," one prominent banker said.
"He does not know how to run a business," another said. "How can he run a country?"
Still, even as he weathered four corporate bankruptcies, Trump has amassed a fortune mainly in real estate estimated at $4.5 billion.
"We sometimes forget that underneath all the things that he does -- the talking, the hair, the TV shows -- he does know how to build, and he does know how to do that in an extremely efficient and economical way," said Gwenda Blair, author of "The Trumps," a book about the tycoon and his family.
Whatever it feels, Wall Street doesn't have a clear alternative, with polls showing Trump's top Republican rivals, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both too weak to overcome his lead in the primary race.
Some in the traditionally heavily Republican finance community are prepared to turn their support to Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November election, if the other choice is Trump.
"The market is nervous about him," Valliere said.
Clinton is "the devil you know," he added. "The market will live with her."
Trump reverses stance on torture and targeting civilians
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Macomb Community College, Friday, March 4, 2016, in Warren, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump retreated Friday from his promise that if elected president he would order the military to kill family members of militants who threaten the United States.
Trump's campaign issued a statement quoting him as saying he would not order the military to take actions contrary to international or U.S. law.
But fewer than 24 hours earlier, in Thursday's GOP debate, Trump stuck to his position on targeting family members of militants and on an expansive use of torture against captured militants. When a debate moderator asked him what he would do if the military refused to carry out such orders, Trump replied: "They're not going to refuse me. Believe me."
The use of torture and the killing of civilians are barred by the Geneva Conventions, to which the United States is a signatory. Congress outlawed waterboarding and any so-called enhanced interrogation techniques after the administration of George W. Bush carried out such acts against suspected al-Qaida fighters. Members of the U.S. military are bound by duty and tradition to refuse orders they know to be illegal. This includes intentionally targeting civilian noncombatants.
The issue drew additional attention this week when more than 100 Republican defense and national security figures, including former senior Pentagon officials, issued a statement blasting Trump's foreign policy positions and calling his embrace of the expansive use of torture "inexcusable."
Defining when aggressive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding amount to torture is a matter of debate, but Trump had made clear that as president he would not hesitate to go beyond waterboarding.
"We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding," he said at Thursday's debate.
He also had defended his position on targeting the family of militants, which he first raised in a "FOX and Friends" interview last December. "The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families."
On Friday, however, Trump reversed course.
"I will use every legal power that I have to stop these terrorist enemies," the statement issued by his campaign said. "I do, however, understand that the United States is bound by laws and treaties and I will not order our military or other officials to violate those laws and will seek their advice on such matters. I will not order a military officer to disobey the law. It is clear that as president I will be bound by laws just like all Americans and I will meet those responsibilities."
The Trump campaign also has announced that Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is Trump's adviser on national security matters during the campaign.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, an early contender for the Republican presidential nomination, said Friday he wrote to Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asking his views on whether the intentional targeting of noncombatant family members of militants, including children, is legal under the laws of war. Graham, a former military lawyer, also asked Dunford what advice he would give troops if ordered to target such civilians.
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