He doesn’t know much about how to control a virus. Nor does he show much sign of being able to run an administration with any semblance of competence. But there is one thing that Donald Trump does know how to do. Hit a raw nerve. And in his decision to attack Germany, and its increasingly destabilising role in world affairs, he looks to have done that again.
The president’s latest campaign speech in Tulsa mainly attracted attention for its reckless approach to Covid-19 and its inflammatory racial remarks on the Chinese origins of what, with his typical playground humour, he referred to as the ‘kung flu’.
But Trump also took a few swipes at the largest European country, and the place where the Trumps originally came from. Germany was ‘ripping off’ the US, he proclaimed, arguing that the country owed America $1 trillion (£800bn), and its dependence on Russian gas was funding Nato’s main opponent.
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