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[Xando]

Spiegel got some inside on how the german goverment is viewing and preparing for Trump

The hour-long video didn't exactly put the German chancellor in a cheerful mood. The footage was from Donald Trump's recent appearance in Pennsylvania during his so-called Thank You Tour and Angela Merkel, as she told the national executive committee of her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), watched the rally in its entirety. She recommended that her fellow party members do the same. "It is interesting to see the thought environment he inhabits," she said.

During his speech, Trump celebrated a landslide victory that was anything but; he blasted the press ("the world's most dishonest people") and in no way left the impression that he has matured into a statesman following his election win. But one passage really stood out in Merkel's memory and she quoted it verbatim: "There is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency, a global flag. We salute one flag, and that is the American flag."

Merkel described Trump's speech as "culturally interesting," saying that it indicated the political direction the president-elect might take. Trump, she said, has announced plans for massive tax cuts and added that his primary focus is America first. Merkel made her comments in a calm tone of voice, but the extent of her concern was clear to all who attended the pre-Christmas meeting: She is preparing for the worst.

Merkel largely refrained from public comment during the US election campaign and she considered it a mistake when Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier publicly described the Republican candidate as a "hate preacher." That doesn't, however, mean that she doesn't share his opinion.

Internally, she makes no secret of what she thinks about Trump's campaign. No other presidential candidate in the history of the United States has ever violated the rules of decency to the degree that Trump has. That's how Merkel sees it. That helps explain why, in a brief statement given to the press following his Nov. 9 election, she held the kind of moral sermon that no previous German chancellor had ever delivered to a US president.

She said that "Germany and America are connected by values of democracy, freedom and respect for law." She then offered close cooperation with the next president on the "basis of these values." It was the language of a parole officer trying to get her charge back on the right track. Merkel didn't just say this publicly -- she also repeated it during an hour-long telephone conversation with Trump on Nov. 11. The future president remained friendly, but was apparently thoroughly unimpressed

Merkel and her advisors were shocked that Trump refused to abandon his Twitter account, even after his Nov. 9 victory. How he, in all seriousness, suggested to British Prime Minister Theresa May that she should appoint Brexit populist Nigel Farage, one of her worst political adversaries, as her country's ambassador to Washington. Before then turning his attention to late-night television, issuing grades to actors who spoofed him on "Saturday Night Live." ("Not funny ... Sad.")

In April, Steinmeier's state secretary Markus Ederer met with former Air Force colonel Sam Clovis. The Iowa Republican sought to ease the German's concern about a possible Trump victory. But whenever Ederer probed deeper, Clovis was unable to provide satisfactory answers. Germany's Ambassador to Washington, Peter Wittig, had a similar experience when he met with Trump's step son Jared Kushner in spring 2016. Steinmeier even made several telephone calls to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, "but even he couldn't help us," the foreign minister told the German parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee the day after the election.

Trump also has a penchant for dismissing the warnings of his advisers and allies. This creates the additional problem that efforts to coax or even pressure the new president may have the opposite of the intended effect. "To Trump, what matters is not if his decisions are coherent, but how they are perceived," says one diplomat who represented the German government in Washington.

On Michael Flynn:

Still, the government in Berlin is less hopeful when it comes to other appointments Trump has made. A number of German military personnel also got to know Trump's designated national security adviser, Michael Flynn, during the time he served as a senior staffer for American ISAF Commander Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan. The verdict among German military officials is as unanimous as it is scathing. "At best, he is useful as a locomotive fire tender and not as a strategist," says one German military officer who has since retired.

In Kabul, Flynn was thought to care little about collateral damage. Whereas his boss McChrystal always took pains to avoid civilian losses, Flynn seemed less concerned about killing innocent Afghans. One German officer says it is little wonder that Flynn never succeeded in getting promoted from a three-star to a four-star general. Soon, though, he will be sitting in the White House, where he will be tasked with coordinating U.S. security policy. Officials in Berlin are certain that those policies will not be overly friendly toward the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Much more at the link
http://www.spiegel.de/international...es-frosty-relations-with-u-s-a-1128442-2.html

 

[Stinkles]

27% of American voters, tricked by lies and energized by naked unadulterated racism, voted this guy in. That's the opposite of a landslide.

This individual, likely up to his neck in debt (and blackmail, I'm guessing) from a known enemy of the United States, is dumping our relationships based on instructions from his fascist inside circle.

he needs to be stopped BY the GOP. Unless their new policy is to upend the entire democracy.

 

[Xando]

he needs to be stopped BY the GOP. Unless their new policy is to upend the entire democracy.

Unfortunately it seems like all the GOP cares about is power.

They won presidency + congress and the supreme court thanks to him and will only double down on his politics

 

[Laevateinn]

This won't be the first time we've had frosty relations with Germany. It's just this time the Nazis are on the other side of the ocean.