19/01/2017 The Papers

You are watching BBC News. Let's take you straight to Washington,

where they are close to the Lincoln Memorial, and that is the Piano

Guys, and you'd be forgiven for not having heard of them, but they are

taking part in a celebration for the impending inauguration of Donald

Craig Trump. This is -- Donald Jay Trump. These guys are among the

headline acts, as well as Green Day. Part of the reason they are having

this at the moment is all Trump and his inauguration team are attracting

some A-list celebrities to take part in celebrations tomorrow. In fact,

one Hollywood Broadway star, Jennifer Holliday, she's had to pull

out after criticism from the LGB TE community. We are possibly going to

get some words from the man himself, Donald Trump, in the next few

minutes. We will try to bring you that. But in the meantime, as I say,

you are watching the Piano Guys. Serenading a few thousand people

there, I suppose! With me in the studio are our guests for The

Papers. With me are Guardian

columnist Hugh Muir, and Dan Bilefsky from the New York

Times. All the papers are dominated by the

inauguration tomorrow, and as I try to explain, it's been a bit tricky

for the President-elect to get some headline acts. Hugh, his problem,

certainly as far as the inauguration is concerned, is that he's not seen

by some as the of person who should be head of state. But a lot of

people do believe that his presidency, when it begins, is not

getting off on the right foot. Well, who knows what we're going to get?

And one can understand all of these stars who might have normally

expected to be at and inauguration but have decided not to be there. It

doesn't look great on your resume, does it? Serenading President Trump.

On your CV! And canny a West was asked to be there but they said, no,

they will have a traditional American event. Just the tone of the

this presidency. They've been saying this presidency. They've been saying

in a speech tomorrow he will talk about being a president for a united

America, but what we are seeing doesn't really seem to have got off

on a good fit. If those boys are the best he can do, he's not going to be

a star-spangled president, I don't think. That's one way of putting it!

But if this is his first inaugural, it will go down in the history books

and kids will be poring over it in their history books over the next

40, 50, 60 years, and if it is an inaugural that attempts to bring

together those divides, then he will be seen as someone who is trying to

change the dynamic of what his campaign and so far his transition

has been about, which is that it still has been divisive. After he

won the presidency he gave some conciliatory remarks. He tried to

make peace with Hillary. And then in the matter of a few days he was back

on Twitter sending incendiary tweets, attacking his opponents,

attacking Hollywood and Meryl Streep, and on and on. So although

he was able to behave and he'll and be presidential, it didn't take long

for the old Donald Trump, the performer, the adversarial

politician, to come to the forefront. People who know him say

they would be very surprised if the office of the presidency taints him

now. If we go to the first paper this evening, the daily Mirror, the

41st president of the United States, and a profile shot of Donald Trump.

"Now The world holds its breath". And there are pictures of the

previous 44 presidents of the United States around it. I suppose, Hugh,

the point Danny is making is that everyone expected Donald Trump as a

former Governor of New York once said, to campaign in poetry and

Govan in prose. He hasn't shifted at all. -- govern. No, and you would

expect it to grow into the office he was about to occupy but there's been

no sign of that at all. There are two possibilities. One is that he

felt he needed to retain that character, he needed to retain the

persona that got him this far, particularly at the inauguration,

because I could see it would be pretty depressing for some of his

supporters if up until the point that he won, he was one person, and

then suddenly he became a completely different person! He spent the whole

campaign railing against the elite, the politics as usual, so if you

then sounded like a normal politician suddenly having won, I

can see a lot of people who support it would start to lose faith, so

that's one theory, that this is deliberate and that he deliberately

has kept in character, if you like. The other is that he just can't help

himself, you can't do it. He's completely incapable. And in that

case, wow, what an inauguration speech were going to have tomorrow!

Though supposedly be people writing it down but he might talk about his

hotels, you might make it up, he might pick a fight with someone in

the audience! Who knows what's going to happen? But Barack Obama has

said, and he said this in his press conference yesterday, the weight of

the presidency, the enormity of the job sobers you up. He seemed to give

the impression that once that mantle has been placed on Donald Trump's

shoulders, that he will somehow shift. When we saw Donald Trump

first next President Obama in the Oval Office, he seemed petrified and

small and freaked out at the reality. I think in many ways, he's

this consummate salesman, he was selling this narrative of himself

throughout the campaign, and when he finally obtained the presidency, he

could barely believe it. But I also think, like you said, this is a man

who ran with throwing a bomb at the political establishment and he's

going to continue along those lines, and so the presidency might tame him

to some extent but he's Donald Trump. He's not someone who changes

to go like the wind. He follows his own script and he wants to raise a

middle finger at the establishment, and I don't think that's going to

stop just because he becomes president. Well, you work for fake

news! The New York Times! Be interesting -- the interesting thing

is that they said they will board with the pictures of Presidents.

Don't ask me to pick out the one they were talking about, Andrew

Jackson... Or historical knowledge is better than mine! Andrew Jackson

was the Donald Trump of his day. He was the plain speaking president for

the ordinary guy, he was running against the elites and his

inauguration day was pretty wild. People brought their horses and

cattle into the White House pretty much! A day that Washington had

never seen! So there has been a time in the past where they just got fed

up with what is seen as routine politics and then brought someone in

to disrupt it all. And then it's gone back to being what we would see

as being a sane country again. I'm clutching at straws here! But this

has happened before! Maybe the equilibria will come back after four

years, maybe not! We might not have to wait! But isn't that what has

made America great? The fact that it has been willing to throw everything

up. A sense of innovation, moving forward constantly like a shark,

like a laser beam. And not becoming what Donald Rumsfeld famously

described Europe as - old Europe, stained, frosty, no sense of

innovation. Isn't that what has made America what it is? The fact that it

can throw up something like Trump? Well, indeed... That is a no! The

fact that he is in the tradition of the great salesman and a reality TV

star and he was able to come -- become the president of the United

States, in some ways it's a decidedly American morality tale,

but it's not exactly an American dream story. Obama had an American

dream narrative. He didn't know his father till he was older, he was

raised by his mother, the first African-American president. I'm not

sure Donald Trump encompasses that same narrative. He was born with a

silver spoon in his mouth, he had investments from his father, his own

company. Paradoxically, he's managed to refashion himself as an everyman,

as a working-class hero, and that's the great irony of this, but it

doesn't have the same mood music as the entrance of Obama on the

political stage. Yes. Let's go back to the Make America Great Again, and

I think onstage that is the US Army band, the pipers, and they are doing

Stars And Stripes Forever. After them, it is a guy called Harvey

Keith. I've heard of him! A country guy, I think! Let's go back to the

papers. The Times. This is basically Donald's Got Talent, isn't it? Do

you think you collected these people on the road to Washington? The

Times, he is the legitimate president of the United States, and

whatever you think about him, given what we see over the last few days

in a place like Gambia, is that America can pass the torch in a

peaceful way to a new administration. And that is

something to be applauded. Indeed. Past presidents will be there, even

those who have been sharply critical of him. The only one who won't be is

George Bush senior, who is unwell. But there will be Bill Clinton, etc,

and it does speak to the kind of democracy that America is. But, you

know, I think this will be an important moment for the rest of

America, for liberal America, because they're really going to have

to work out what they are for, what they believe. In a way, Trump will

give them the sharpest definition they can possibly have this is what

The Times is focusing on. Both in the States here. There are what they

would see as liberal activists who are already trying to mobilise and

say it might be four long years but we've got to start now and show that

we don't think the way Trump does things is the way and we don't want

this to be the dominant view. The number of times he talks about the

events taking place in Washington at the same time as the inauguration,

people who are going to speak at them, including our own columnist,

just give him a shout out! For which we are grateful. But I think both

here and in America, we're really going to have to work out what we

are for and if this is the prevailing wind, what the attack is.

What is your view on how Democrats will handle Mr Trump? We know what

Republicans did with Barack Obama - they Froch every turn. Is that what

the Democrats will do? -- they blocked him. Initially I think they

will give him the benefit of the doubt. The electoral politics are

such that the Republicans have both houses and as such they can put

through their own policies. They will try to conserve Obama's legacy

as much as possible. But what we're hearing is that they will try, to

give him the benefit of the doubt, then see what happens, but it's up

in the air at the moment. Let's go back to Washington. The Make America

Great Again celebration. And this is Toby Keith, and, as I say, I've

heard of him. Let's listen in. # I'm an American soldier

# I'm an American # I've got my brothers and my

sisters # I stand proud...

Plenty of that! The Telegraph. Dan, how does this square with him

wanting to spend 1 trillion on investment projects? Is very

bizarre, frankly, because he want to spend -- he wanted to spend 1

billion on infrastructure projects to help everyman, but he's also

trying to preach smaller government, and if you have a smaller

government, who is going to deliver these infrastructure projects? So

it's a typical Trump comment to say one thing and then the opposite. Is

part of his problem, Hugh, that he's been so specific in what he's going

to do? I'm going to bring back jobs, I'm going to bring back coal mining,

I'm going to bring back factories? Whereas past presidents, yes, of

course on the campaign trail they talk specifics a bit but they don't

zero in on the gripes, but he has zeroed in on gripes people have and

he's got to live with that. That will be his problem come Saturday

morning. It's all very well to have a reality show president who

promises things... Stop belittling the man! I'm not American, I don't

have to respect the office! But his promise, as you say, of specific

things, it's interesting. As fervent as people are now in their support

of him, that can flip. And one of the ways it can do that is the

people he has promised things too, when they say, well, we not getting

those things. The presidency had is a bit of a bully pulpit. It has some

powers but in many ways the office of Prime Minister here is a more

powerful job. I'll interject. I think those of us in the liberal

chamber have been taking him to lightly and when he says he will

build a wall, maybe you will, but most of the electorate... It

incorporates that as saying... If you set about coal miner, I'm going

to give you your job back, you've got to do it, and yet half those

jobs have gone because of automation, because the Chinese are

dumping steel, and because it's done cheaper around the rest of the

world. How do you do that? The angry white man will pay dividends to that

to some extent and buy him some time, and it doesn't mean he won't

have to find them jobs, you will. But the fact that the person who

spoke that language is now in the White House and the music has

changed... That's really interesting. We have here, we've no

idea what this guy is going to do. The fact he says one thing, does

another, he flips, he flops. He's such a loose cannon. Dan, how much

time has he got? Is it essentially two years before the midterms? I

think it's going to have to be before two years he's going to have

to produce some results. They are going to want to see jobs and

benefits. At the same time, the fact he can channel the anger and be this

everyman, that will ingratiate him to his base. But he's going to have

to produce some results very quickly, I would say. The really

distressing thing about that quote, we've no idea what this man is going

to do, it came from Joe bidden, in an interview with the New York

Times. -- Joe Biden. You can't help wondering what might have happened

if Joe Biden had been the candidate and not Hillary Clinton. Yes, much

closer to the working class. Finally, farewell, Mr President. The

only paper not to have Trump on the front. And I suppose the Metro is

reflecting on what has gone to put into context what's to come. And

it's also the fact that for many people, President Obama was one of

the most transformational president since Lincoln, arguably, when you

think of what you don't -- what he did on Iran, human rights, lesbian

and gay rights, mobilising the economy after 2008, and what a

transformational figure he was. I think the Metro is giving some

credence to his historical legacy. Some argue he didn't do enough with

the economy that allowed Trump to get in. He had his own personal

flaws that maybe didn't lend him to the American system. If you think of

someone like Bill Clinton, who was able to deal with, haggle with,

negotiate with people who were his political opponents, I never got the

impression Obama could do that. But if you think about the opposition

there was to him throughout, and you think of the challenges and the

state of the economy when he took over, I think he's been an

exceptional president. I'm not even American and I'm proud of him! But I

don't think we will see his like again in our lifetime. Thank you to

both of you. This particular story in front of the papers. And if Mr

Trump does speak at that Make America Great Again celebration in

Washington, we will bring it to here on BBC News. But now it's time for

the