Having been obsessed with U.S. President Donald Trump since the day he took office three years ago, the German mainstream and state-run media outlets rejoiced at the outcome of the impeachment vote in the Democratic-led House of Representatives.

Germany’s state-owned news outlet Deutsche Welle led the charge, declaring, “Trump earned his impeachment.” The outlet welcomed the attempted ouster of a foreign head of the state, saying: “Continuing with more of the same from the US president was no longer an option.” Deutsche Welle rejoiced at the fact that the “presidency of Donald Trump will forever be stained” by the vote.

The German station congratulated U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party on their “huge success:”

It’s a huge success for the Democratic Party and for Trump’s adversary Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House. She got her party to fall into line. Democrats didn’t flinch. However, they were unable to convince Republicans, who — as always — continue to support the president, as unbelievable as this appears to an outside observer, closing their eyes to his scandalous behavior. We shouldn’t have expected anything else.

Rebuking the Republican members of the Congress, Deutsche Welle concluded: “Those not ready to defend the US Constitution have no business taking an oath to it.”

Germany’s top state-owned news outlet ZDF called the impeachment “a symbol of hope for democracy.” The Congressional Democrats had a “sacred duty” to impeach the sitting U.S. President, the outlet claimed.

The country’s most-read newspaper Die Welt was just as aggressive in its attack on the U.S. president. In an editorial titled “A president founding father warned against,” the paper described the impeachment of Trump as “an act of democratic hygiene.”

The Berlin-based left-wing Die Tageszeitung newspaper called him an “anti-statesman” who acts “criminally and aggressively.” Drawing parallels on Germany’s dark history, the paper warned: “One can start dictatorships with democratic majorities, there are a number of examples for that.”

Germany’s leading newsweekly Der Spiegel accused President Trump of lying: “The truth is that President Trump and his aides created a false reality, wherein lying in not only allowed but desirable.”

Der Spiegel had some gall talking about truth. Last year, the magazine’s star reporter was caught fabricating a story portraying Trump supporters as racists. The publication had to fire Claas Relotius for making up a series of fake stories to fit the publication’s anti-American and anti-Trump narrative. Ironically, the ‘fake’ reporter won the ‘CNN Journalist of the Year’ before getting caught.

This bias is not limited to a few German left-wing publications. A 2017 Harvard study concluded that German media coverage was “extremely negative” toward President Trump.

The study by Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center found that during “Trump’s first 100 days in office, 98 percent of [Germany’s state-run] ARD‘s news coverage that assigned value to a story about him was negative,” a figure higher than that of CNN, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times or any other media outlet included in the study.

‘President Donald Trump hits back after impeachment.’

﻿

[Cover image via YouTube] [Excerpts from German media reports translated by the author]



