For Germans, Losing the U.S. to Trump Is Like Losing a Father
The 30th-anniversary celebration of the Berlin Wall’s collapse comes with grief over the end of a special relationship.
Disowned.
Photographer: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images
Germans of a certain age will be writhing with conflicting emotions this week, 30 years after the Berlin Wall cracked open, as they listen to an emissary of U.S. President Donald Trump. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will mark the anniversary with a speech in Berlin. Looking on will be Chancellor Angela Merkel, the opposite of everything Trump represents. Pompeo plans to exhort her to “defend free nations and free peoples.”
Rhetorically, that sounds like the America of three decades ago, and could have been uttered by President George H.W. Bush or his secretary of state, James Baker. But the Germans will be rolling their eyes, and some may shed a stealthy tear. For Pompeo’s oratory will sound empty and hypocritical to them, and thus frightening. As they know better than Americans do, nothing is the same between Germany and America, and that’s a disaster.