Donald Trump slams Angela Merkel's refugee policy
Source: Deutsche Welle
US President-elect Donald Trump labeled German Chancellor Angela Merkel's stance on refugees a "catastrophic mistake." He said the policy would lead to even more countries leaving the European Union after Britain.
President-elect Trump heavily criticized Chancellor Merkel's open-door policy on refugees in a joint interview published on Sunday with German tabloid newspaper "Bild" and British newspaper "The Times of London."
"I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, you know, taking all of the people from wherever they come from,” he said.
"And nobody even knows where they come from. So I think she made a catastrophic mistake, very bad mistake.”
In 2015 about 900,000 migrants, many coming from Syria, entered Germany after Merkel opened the country's doors, famously saying "we can do this."
Read more: http://www.dw.com/en/donald-trump-slams-angela-merkels-refugee-policy/a-37141791
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He may be "media savvy" but his ONLY interest is not in the nation, but in what is good for HIMSELF (first and then his family second). THIS is what DUers are essentially saying. In his world, the oft-used euphemism -"There are no permanent enemies or permanent friends, just permanent interests" - applies.
His "public positions" (via idiotic stream-of-consciousness tweets and/or interviews on political shows) literally CHANGE by the hour. His own "base" is being whipped around as he proclaims that Mexico will pay for a wall and then reverses himself and says the U.S. will pay for a wall and "negotiate with Mexico" for reimbursement and other nonsense. He has proclaimed that he will throw out all of the "illegals" one day, and then reverses that and claims he wants to consider service in the military as being a path to citizenship by those "illegals", in addition to encouraging more European immigrants.
IMHO, too many actually try to give him "credit" for his erratic behavior (akin to glorifying the likes of a Ted Kaczynski, a Harvard graduate and prodigy who was likewise mentally unstable), where some of his "policies" were regurgitated from his advisors and others from his own addled brain, and in direct conflict with what he might have said a day earlier.
I.e., don't confuse his ability to manipulate the press and garner media "attention" (whether negative or positive) with some sort of "savvy" or brilliance on his part when it comes to policy issues. His multiple bankruptcies reflect his bankrupt mind. He is the useful idiot of the media providing them ratings and in return, he gets to feed his ego.
Europe's post-WWI partitioning of the Middle East has come home to roost and contemporary Europe (mostly "Western Europe"
is now trying to deal with what their antecedent colonial & empire-building predecessors left behind. And that includes mass immigration from former colonies of theirs, as those governments destabilized (with and without their earlier help).
As a side note, I had recorded the film "Metropolis" (1927) about 5 years ago when it ran on TCM. I finally watched it last night. From that 2 hour 28 minute film (TCM had the full restored version that had recently been compiled from a copy of missing footage that had been found in 2008), there is a scene near the end where the underground workers have been so whipped into a frenzy to destroy the machinery that powered the great city of the wealthy above, that they refused to comprehend that doing so would destroy their own dwellings below that were powered and protected by the same machinery. The poor Workers' Foreman begged and pleaded that they not take out the final piece - the "Heart Machine" that he alone maintained, and that held the rest of the operations together. But like the Trump voters we see today, in their foaming-at-the-mouth fury, they took it out anyway and then sang and danced around the remains of the central core machine while pipes burst around the city above and flooded their own dwellings in the city below - where their children were sleeping and left unattended to drown. The scene of the defeated Foreman asking them where their children were while their own city was being flooded, resulted in what was designed to be a heart-breaking scene - the mob suddenly waking up out of a stupor from their acts of glorious retribution, and ultimately wailing in pain. Of course they then went looking for a scapegoat - who would be one of the main protagonists (a pious and generous religious woman known by the workers, who was targeted and eventually replicated as a machine designed to deceive the workers by order of the upper City Manager). However in what could be considered "Hollywood style happy ending" (although the film was German), the children had already been rescued by the main protagonists (including the original human woman who had been replicated, where the android version of her was eventually destroyed by the mob who soon discovered what they "burned at the stake as a witch" was but a machine).
These types of human nature stories (and potential resolutions) may need to be looked at in order to come up with strategies.
