Germany’s Tweet Correcting Trump Debate Lie Ends With A Zinger

Trump was typical Trump during Tuesday’s debate. He spouted lies instead of answering questions with some being well-worn ones and some pulled out of his fat orange azz on the fly. We knew it would happen. What we were (or me at least) was a little (not enough but enough to notice) some actual, firm real-time fact checking by the moderators. That rattled an already rattled (from the moment Harris walked up and forced him to shake hands) Trump. Still, we knew there would be lots of fact checking to come AFTER the debate. What has just surprised the hell of of lil ole me is that the govt. of Germany decided to very publicly fact-check Trump!

The title of the MSNBC article about this says it was a “brutal” fact check and the more I think about it that word is pretty accurate.  The only thing about it that would have made this worse for Trump is if Angela Merkle was still running that country. A woman. Still, this came  out under the banner of Germany’s Foreign Office twitter/X account and that’s plenty bad. So what’s the issue at hand?

Well, Trump tried to trash renewable energy as a way of trashing Harris’ plans.  Trump can remember ‘Drill Baby Drill’ and that’s his energy policy. (Of course being Trump I’m sure every time he says that he’s also thinking of it as a vulgar sexual expression) Trumpty made the mistake of trying to use Germany as an example of shifting to renewables being dumb, or stupid or unrealistic. As ‘proof’ he cited their having to ramp up use of coal plants when Russia cut natural gas to western Europe. During the debate he claimed:

You believe in things like ‘We’re not going to frack, we’re not going to take fossil fuel.’ … Germany tried that, and within one year, they were back to building normal energy plants.

Trump thought he had himself a moment. A talking point. Sort of: A Ha! See? This renewable energy is junk science and bad policy. Germany tried it and it failed so they’ve gone back to ‘beautiful’ ‘clean’ coal!  The thing is, it didn’t go down that way.  Germany did NOT back off it’s policy goals on converting to renewable energy sources.  Of course as MSNBC notes it would have been simple to look up some pretty basic information that proved him wrong: 

As with many Trump claims, this one could have been cleared up with a simple Google search. After Russia throttled its gas supply to Germany after invading Ukraine, Germany had to increase its use of coal-fired power plants to shore up its energy supply. But the country didn’t — and hasn’t — abandoned its investment in renewable energy as Trump suggested. In fact, Russia’s war has led Germany to hasten its investment.

Maybe some one did look it up, and Trump ignored what I just noted. He is after all a fire-hose of lies.  He might have figured this would fall through the fact-checking cracks. For damned sure I don’t think in his worst nightmares he ever thought the freaking GOVERNMENT OF GERMANY would go on twitter and not just fact check him but hand him his ass. But they did. I can’t seem to embed the actual tweet but here’s the text from GermanForeignOffice@GermanyDiplo:

Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables. And we are shutting down – not building – coal & nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest. PS: We also don’t eat cats and dogs. #Debate2024

That last bit about the cats and dogs is an outright troll by the government of Germany on Donald Trump!  Think about that. Then think about how OTHER allies might start looking for ways to imitate what Germany has just done. Trump keeps claiming he was soooooo respected and now the whole world and our allies are laughing at us. Imagine if a collection of our staunchest allies, not just prominent people but prominent people using government social media accounts get in their own digs like Germany did.

Great a job as she did Tuesday night there were a couple of kill shots Harris didn’t take. She could have pointed out that in 2018 the entire General Assembly of the U.N. laughed in Trump’s face when he tried one of his rally lines during his speech. No other U.S. President has had that happen and sure as hell not Joe Biden.  It’s a careful line to walk diplomatically to call out even a former President the way Germany has just done.  Did they step over the line a bit with that troll at the end?  Perhaps. However if some of our other allies find a way to do what Germany did then this could build into something huge.

In the meantime if you know or hear someone trot  out Trump’s ‘other countries are laughing at us’ bullshit you’ve got a ready made answer for them. A short and sweet BRUTAL takedown from a staunch and key ally.

Thanks for reading.