Donald Trump has said that he considers NATO "obsolete," and that the EU is "basically a vehicle for Germany" that "more countries will leave" in a wide-ranging series of comments that also revealed his views of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. While Merkel was described as "by far the most important European leader," Trump attacked her leadership when it came to migrants and refugees. Angela Merkel declared Germany’s borders open in the summer of 2015, in an effort to reduce the pressures created by the migrant crisis in countries like Hungary. Germany received around a million people from northern Africa and the Middle East. Merkel’s aim was to show that modern, postwar Germany was a place were those fleeing conflict and atrocities could find safe harbour.

It is that policy that Donald Trump took issue with, describing Merkel as having "made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals." In doing so, Trump used the dehumanising language that won him so much support in America, but technically speaking there is no such thing as an "illegal" or even an "illegal immigrant" – this is language designed to separate and distance us from a particular sort of criminal behaviour, which we do not use in other contexts.

Trump’s criticism of Merkel comes as pressure mounts on Germany’s chancellor within her own country where she is under constant attack from all sides for her stance on migration. The far right capitalised on the murder of twelve people at a Christmas market in Berlin in December, just as many incidents of criminality are now viewed through the prism of the migration debate. Angela Merkel runs for a fourth term in office this year, and Trump’s comments about her migration policy have to be seen in the context of a vast effort to unseat her. Facebook is being sued in Germany by a Syrian refugee who was falsely identified in fake news spread on the social media platform as being involved in terrorism, and despite attempts by both the government and social media to halt the spread of disinformation online, there is plenty of it about. A recent Buzzfeed investigation found that the most-viewed articles about Angela Merkel on Facebook are critical and misleading attacks on Angela Merkel from pages that spread conspiracy theories and false stories.

Trump’s attack fits neatly into a familiar barrage of attacks that Angela Merkel is facing. It may be no coincidence that the dossier compiled by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele on Donald Trump described Vladimir Putin’s preference for an international world order which is closer to the nineteenth century model of nation states, rather than the post-war ideals that underpin alliances like NATO and the European Union. Merkel is a strong champion for the European Union, and her downfall would weaken the future of the EU, which fits everything we know about Vladimir Putin’s preference for a strong Russia against a divided Europe.

In America, Trump’s use of "illegals" to describe human beings is nothing new, but it is still divisive.

Rallies were held in 50 cities across the USA last weekend, organised by civil rights groups who wanted a "Day of Action" to protest against Trump’s rhetoric and his approach to illegal immigration. Describing someone illegal "is an offensive term that dehumanises the individual," said one Californian lawyer. And in the words of the Trump-supporting website Breitbart, "Hundreds of illegal aliens rallied in downtown Los Angeles". The race to the bottom in the debate about illegal immigration is surely to describe people as "aliens" – to describe people as other, inhuman, to alienate them.

While some people break laws and enter countries illegally, it is the act which is illegal, rather than the person. Just as we don’t become "illegals" when we drive too fast, litter, or download material in breach of copyright laws, we should consider the use of the term to describe fellow human beings. For Trump supporters, this is the sort of language-policing sentiment that they are rebelling against. Political correctness gone mad, the intolerance of the snowflake thought police. It is worth remembering that the snowflakes are losing the battle, as there is evidence to show that "illegal" is the most common term attached to articles about migrants in the press, and there is a solid argument to be made that politicians should talk to the public in a language that they understand and use themselves, rather than in the sort of technical babble that leaves "plain speaking" to politicians like Donald Trump.

Many argue that the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants is a significant one, describing as it does the important difference between men and women who have done everything right, and those who have broken laws. The contrast can be a way of separating the "good" sort of migration from the rest, and thus protecting the status and public sympathy towards migrants. It is unlikely that these arguments have much troubled Donald Trump, though. Given what we know about Trump, it is more likely that he is helping to pile pressure onto Angela Merkel ahead of her election. The big question is: whose idea was that?