What Trump's foreign critics said before his victory

PARIS

US president-elect Donald Trump was often scorned as he campaigned for office, and many of those who spoke harshly of him will now have to accommodate the unpredictable Republican tycoon.
Here are a few examples:

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein

"If Donald Trump is elected, on the basis of what he has said already, and unless that changes, I think that it is without any doubt that he would be dangerous from an international point of view," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said on October 12.

Al Hussein deplored Trump's "disturbing" comments, among them a call to adopt interrogation techniques that legal experts say amount to torture.

Trump's attacks on "vulnerable communities" such as Muslims, immigrants and minorities "suggest that they may well be deprived of their human rights," he warned.

Francois Hollande

"His excesses make you want to retch, even in the United States, especially when — as was Donald Trump's case — he speaks ill of a soldier, of the memory of a soldier," French President Francois Hollande told media on August 2, as Trump feuded with the Muslim parents of a US army captain who died trying to save his men in Iraq.

German vice-chancellor
Trump and other "right-wing populists are not only a threat to peace and social cohesion but also to economic development", the centre-left Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper on March 6.

Pope Francis
"Anyone, whoever he is, who only wants to build walls and not bridges is not a Christian," Pope Francis told journalists on February 18 on his return from a visit to Mexico. The pontiff had celebrated Mass near the border fence that separates Mexico from the United States, and had delivered a sermon heard on both sides.

Trump has promised to build a wall to prevent illegal Mexican immigrants from entering the US.

Mexican president

On March 7, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto compared Trump's harsh remarks against Mexican and Muslim immigrants to the rise of the German and Italian dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
"There have been episodes in the history of humanity, unfortunately, where these expressions, this strident rhetoric, has only really led to ominous scenarios in the history of humanity," Pena Nieto told the daily Excelsior.

"That's how Mussolini and Hitler arrived."

The Mexican president was then roundly criticised for hosting Trump in late August, and explained that it was to convince Trump to rethink positions that included the threat of mass deportations of illegal Mexicans, annulment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and construction of a border wall.

As soon as Trump returned to the US, he reiterated his determination to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it.

Boris Johnson

"The only reason I wouldn't go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump," then London mayor Boris Johnson said on December 8 last year.

He was responding to Trump's proposal to bar Muslims from entering the US, and Trump's claim that parts of London and Paris were so radicalised that police feared to go there. Johnson, now Britain's foreign minister, said Trump was talking "complete and utter nonsense".