Andreas Michaelis allegedly thinks the incoming US president will crack down on democratic institutions and the media
The German ambassador to the US, Andreas Michaelis, has warned Berlin that incoming President Donald Trump will likely try to undermine key principles underpinning American democracy, Reuters has claimed, citing a confidential document.
The Republican firebrand has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the FBI and Department of Justice, accusing them of launching a “witch hunt” against him. Back in 2022, he denounced both as “vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media.”
In an exclusive report on Saturday, Reuters quoted the confidential cable supposedly signed by Michaelis and dated January 14 as predicting that Trump will seek the “maximum concentration of power… at the expense of Congress and the federal states.”
“Basic democratic principles and checks and balances will be largely undermined, the legislature, law enforcement and media will be robbed of their independence and misused as a political arm, Big Tech will be given co-governing power,” the diplomat allegedly wrote.
According to the outlet, the German envoy thinks Trump will not hesitate to deploy the military domestically to make good on his campaign pledges, such as mass deportations of illegal immigrants. Michaelis also is said to have suggested that Trump’s second term in office would likely bring about a “redefinition of the First Amendment,” with the new administration going after its critics.
While the German government has not made any hostile remarks about the Republican, Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday lashed out at US-based tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has recently emerged as one of Trump’s closest allies. He accused the Tesla and SpaceX CEO of attempting to interfere in EU politics by supporting the “extreme right throughout Europe, in Britain, in Germany.”
Last month, Musk described Scholz as an “incompetent fool,” stating that the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) was the only party capable of “saving Germany.” Last week, the tech mogul hosted a livestream with AfD co-chair Alice Weidel on X, his social media platform.
Several weeks after his victory in the November 5 presidential election, Trump named former adviser and ultra-loyalist Kash Patel as the next FBI director. In a recently published book, the former public defender slammed the agency’s work, calling for its complete overhaul.
While his opponents have routinely accused Trump of posing a threat to US democracy, the real estate kingpin tuned politician charged in December 2023 that President Joe Biden had “been weaponizing government against his political opponents like a Third World political tyrant.”
“Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as standing up as allies of democracy,” Trump told his supporters, concluding that the Democrat “is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.”
