WASHINGTON • The crowd at Mr Donald Trump's inauguration may have greeted his first speech as president with warm applause and loud whoops, but in Europe the media was less optimistic and far more critical.

Britain's media extensively covered the President's inauguration, and most newspapers had Mr Trump splashed on their front covers yesterday. However, their overall impression of his speech was bleak.

The left-leaning Guardian newspaper said that the "passing of the baton from Barack Obama to Donald Trump" saw the United States "changed beyond recognition as the new President offered a dark vision of his nation and the world".

The right-leaning The Telegraph noted that Mr Trump had promised Americans to be the "law-and-order candidate" and had, in the process, painted a "dark and terrifying" portrait of America.

The German media was also unimpressed. Der Spiegel, Germany's largest news magazine, noted that Mr Trump's keynote speech was characterised by "attacks against Hillary Clinton and illegal immigrants, many promises and lots of self-praise", reported business news channel CNBC.

Germany's conservative Die Welt newspaper noted: "The speech was populist through and through and offered no solutions." The newspaper added that it lacked "elegance, humour, self-irony".

French financial newspaper Les Echos said Mr Trump had posed as the "saviour of a country at the edge of the apocalypse" in his "endless" speech on "endangered America".

The left-wing Le Monde newspaper also flagged Mr Trump's attempt to paint the "most distressing picture possible of the US".