Trump wades into German migration fight
With a rift over migrants bringing German politics to a boil, the country’s feuding leaders scraped together a truce Monday on an issue that threatens to topple the fragile government.
Then President Donald Trump stepped in.
“The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,” Trump said on Twitter, before falsely claiming that crime in Germany had risen because of immigration.
The migrant issue is a political wildfire in Europe. It has breathed new life into populist movements from Hungary to Austria to Italy, where the newly formed government coalition rose to power in part by drawing on anger about migration. It introduced its immigration policy last week by turning away a boat carrying more than 600 migrants from Africa.
These forces are making it harder for European centrists to hold onto power — and as his comments made clear Monday, Trump is not making it any easier for America’s longtime partners.
“He’s quite clearly trying to split Europe,” said Jiri Pehe, director of New York University’s campus in Prague and a former senior aide to the first president of the Czech Republic.
The U.S. president sometimes uses remarks on events abroad to bolster his position at home. So it was perhaps not coincidental that his tweet about Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany came as he faced a storm of criticism at home over the immigration issue, particularly his policy of separating children and parents at the southern border.
But his comments have led many to suspect his intentions on the Continent.
On Monday, facing a mutiny over the immigration issue, Merkel, anchor of Europe’s centrist establishment, narrowly avoided the collapse of her government.
Merkel has been a sometimes lonely champion for a compassionate approach toward refugees, and for the increasingly endangered liberal consensus that has held sway in Europe since the end of World War II.
Trump’s comments Monday were the latest by him or his associates that suggest a desire to disrupt that consensus, a desire that has deepened as they find more ideological allies in Europe to work with.
Trump’s new ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, said this month that he wanted to “empower” right-wing figures across Europe. And if there is one issue on which Trump can make common cause with his new allies, it may be immigration.
It is too early to say whether Trump’s scattershot outbursts are the harbinger of a settled strategy, said Jeffrey Rathke, a former senior U.S. diplomat who served in missions in Europe.
“But there is certainly an increasing body of evidence that Trump and his representatives are trying to find ways of strengthening those right-wing forces in Europe that oppose the EU playing a strong foreign policy role,” said Rathke, deputy director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Trump has also been a vocal supporter of Giuseppe Conte, the new Italian prime minister, whose government is formed from two populist parties elected on a platform of opposition to the EU and to migration.