Merz attacks againBerlin or Belem – the main thing is to be brave
The chancellor could do nothing: Friedrich Merz attributed the subsequent breakdown in communications to the end of the bygone “city view” debate. If only he questioned the AI!
“Does Merz not have an advisor?” I was asked again this week. Yes, the Chancellor has once again had a minor media mishap. Once again it was as unnecessary as a second nose on a bald forehead, again it filled the press with negative headlines.
Aren’t we only halfway recovered from the “cityscape” debate? Now the head of the German government is mocking the country that just welcomed him. At a trade congress in Berlin he said: “I asked some journalists who were with me in Brazil last week: Which of you would like to stay here? Nobody raised a hand.”
Of course, this could happen because no dignified journalist would want to follow the Chancellor’s behavior. Or the journalists traveling with us live private lives in Germany. The chancellor interpreted the raising of hands as praise for Germany: “They” – Merz meaning the journalists – were “all” happy because they had returned from “this place” – meaning the climate conference venue, Belém.
Friedrich, that’s bullshit
Of course there is a lot of samba in Brazil and if you search for “Merz” and “Belém” on Google, you will mainly find reports of the Chancellor’s embarrassing failures – just like when you search for “Merz” and “Handelskongress”. Poisoning the media reverberations of two appearances with just one formulation was significant even for Merz. The Chancellor can’t seem to stop disparaging migrants, women, gay people or southern countries.
So: Doesn’t he have an advisor? The fact that Merz may have been hanging out with the wrong crowd has long been an open secret in Berlin. That stupid line was actually included in the text of the Chancellor’s official speech – so this time it doesn’t seem like a slick improvisation, but rather a planned toilet grab.
Designs like this usually pass through several hands. Didn’t anyone say, Friedrich, that’s rubbish? Nobody said: Maybe we can’t spit in the face of our home country, what impression will that make? Do we really want to sound like Donald Trump, who called African countries “shitholes”?
After all, this is not Belem!
In general: couldn’t anyone in the Chancellor’s circle think of anything more positive about Germany than “but at least it’s not Belém!”?
Apparently not. It’s strange to gossip about a big city with journalists on board. After all, it was the background to the conversation on the plane that could not be quoted – and the professionals strictly adhered to the agreement. Even on the plane, an advisor could say: Belem is cunning!
But perhaps the same thing happens with impolite things as with tomato juice: it tastes much better at 30,000 feet than it does on the ground. This is because Donald Trump also lost communication on the plane this week. When asked about Epstein’s extramarital affairs, he made a rude gesture by telling a journalist that he, a “pig”, should keep his mouth shut (“shut up, pig”). Maybe a stupid guy should put some Valium in his fly box once in a while.
Blind to ultra-conservative values
Maybe because of stress. As Trump spoke to reporters, the plane was rocked by turbulence so strong that the president was concerned about its impact on the TV. After all, he was under pressure at home like never before. Merz must also be under pressure on the plane, as minority government talks in Berlin have not stopped since the row over retirement.
The increasing friction with the CDU’s younger members is also evidence of a lack of empathy: budget discipline is an inherently conservative value, especially given the debate over easing the debt brake which is currently gaining steam again. If more than 100 billion euros were burned, this should have been known before the cabinet decision was made.
Here the Merz team made the same mistake as occurred in the election judge fiasco. At that time, core conservative issues, such as abortion, were raised by Merz’s own people. So here too: Where are the consultants now? And what exactly does Jens Spahn do for a living?
“Red Alert!”
Of course: you should have no illusions about the profession of communications specialist. No one can make a whisperer into an empathetic person. And if someone in the office wanted to improvise, there wasn’t a press secretary in the world who would speak up.
But one thing always works: chasing a draft speech through AI just before it’s delivered. I did so with the text of the public address: “🚩 Red alert level,” machine writing about “an anecdote about journalists” and explaining that it was a “diplomatic insult”, going against the speaker’s goal of completing the Mercosur agreement and: “A head of government who jokes on an open stage about how happy everyone is to get away from ‘this place’ risks making headlines in the international press.”
The AI was right – and the findings were depressing: a machine showed more empathy than the Chancellor. But the machine didn’t mention a single thing in its answer because I didn’t tell who answered it: the damage done was not only detrimental and cast a shadow on the political balance.
Through this unprofessionalism, Merz also risks what little support he has left after a series of humiliations and mishaps.
