The rebirth of a stone phoenix, attended by political phoenix Donald Trump, and the French president, who was celebrating the genius of a nation of great builders, even while it is wracked by turmoil. These were the metaphors used by foreign media outlets in their coverage of the sumptuous ceremony that marked the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris on Saturday, December 7.
Many media outlets hailed the “miracle” of the cathedral’s restoration, like The Wall Street Journalas well as the skill of the 2,000 craftsmen who had restored it to its near-thousand-year-old beauty within the “impossible” deadlines set by Emmanuel Macron. Other headlines were more impressed by the president’s “diplomatic coup” in inviting Donald Trump to the renovated cathedral, risking desacralizing the event.
Many also highlighted the contrast between the building’s new-found magnificence, more brilliant than ever, and Macron’s gloomy political prospects, who, like many of his peers – foremost among them Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – perhaps had something to dread about the billionaire’s return to office.
The long restoration… of Donald Trump’s status
Having just returned from political purgatory – into which the assault on the Capitol had plunged him on January 6, 2021 – and freshly freed from federal prosecution, the soon-to-be 47th president of the United States symbolically carried out his first foreign trip since his redemptive election, arriving in Paris on Saturday. Having become a pariah nearly four years ago, he is now more courted than ever, and “Trump’s presidency and Notre-Dame have been restored in approximately the same time period,” wrote the Indian daily newspaper Economic Timesciting Heather Conley, a senior advisor to the board of the German Marshall Fund, a think tank that promotes ties between the US and Europe.
“The president-elect returned to Paris on Saturday not as a punchline but as a guest of honor for the reopening of the cathedral whose guardians had once had a laugh at his expense,” observed in the same tone The Washington Post. The paper recalls in passing that, during the fire that devastated the building on April 15, 2019, the White House tenant had suggested that Canadairs be sent in, earning him the thinly veiled sarcasm, in English, of France’s civil security.
“If all goes according to plan, he would like to buy it and turn it into a casino,” predicted comedian Jimmy Kimmel a few days earlier, while his colleague Jimmy Fallon feared that the cathedral would “catch fire again” on his arrival. Without the slightest hint of irony, the German magazine The mirror judged, even before the ceremony, that “history will remember the French president not as the man who raised Notre-Dame from the ashes, but as the one who invited the American who is setting democracy on fire.”
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