Key Merkel Ally Backs Trump, Invites Him to Germany

Bavarian President Horst Seehofer has praised U.S. President-Elect Donald J. Trump and has invited him to Bavaria.

Seehofer, whose party is the coalition partner of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has praised Mr. Trump, reports Die Welt. “I like the fact that he addresses people directly and takes their life into account. Not abstract, not blurred, but with concrete answers. I like that,” said the Bavarian premier.

“People are fed up with the expressionless lyricism used in Germany, just so you don’t create a stir,” said Seehofer. “People want to get out of the vague and into the concrete.”

At the same time, he demanded that the democratically-elected President of the United States should not be “condemned” before he had assumed his office. “We should give him a chance. Practical policy is the benchmark of evaluation.”

The leader of the German state of Bavaria, Germany’s largest state and which has one of the largest economies in Europe, also wrote to the president-elect to congratulate him on his victory and said he would be welcome “any time” in his state capital Munich.

Significantly, Seehofer suggested Trump could attend the city’s annual international security conference in February, just weeks after his inauguration as U.S. president on January 20.

Mrs. Merkel was less than warm in her reaction to the news of Mr. Trump winning the U.S. presidential election. The German chancellor launched a thinly-veiled attack on the president-elect, implying he holds bigoted views by offering her cooperation based on the “dignity of human beings”.

The Bavarian minister president has often clashed with coalition partner Chancellor Merkel over her pro-mass-migration administration. Mr. Seehofer has proposed a cap on migrants entering Germany and the prioritisation of migrants from Christian and Western backgrounds. He has also proposed a Hungarian-style migrant referendum.

Since Mr. Trump’s victory, Merkel has announced she will be running for a fourth term as chancellor. However, she still requires the backing of her CSU coalition partners, and Mr. Seehofer has said that he would only support her election campaign if she changed her migrant policy.

Meanwhile, within her own party, the traditionalist “Berlin Circle”, which rejects Merkel’s progressive migrant and social programmes, seeks to return the CDU back to its conservative roots.