top of page

Germany

Five Minutes to Trump:

Lies and Lapses on the US Campaign Trail

By Klaus Brinkbäumer, Veit Medick, Gordon Repinski and Holger Stark

This article starts with information about Trump's ancestry, and where they hail from. Quickly the article makes a jab at Trump by stating that he would likely have more approval from immigrants if he had any of the variations of his last name: Drumpf, Trumpf, Tromb, Dromb, Trumpff because he would sound more like an immigrant, like someone only recently brought here. 

The article then begins to criticize Trump's lies, pointing out specifically his claim that crime is running rampant in city streets, Obama is the founder of ISIS and that he was always against the war in Iraq. The writers compare Clinton and Trump alluding to times that Clinton has slipped up in the past and needed to apologize for the mistake but, "his fans see his lies as the courage to tell the truth, as chutzpah, as a revolt against those at the top" keeping him from playing on the same field. The piece concludes discussing the role of gender in how Clinton and Trump are expected to act and which gets more scrutiny towards her actions. 

It is rather clear, much more so than in other articles, that the journalists behind this one take the side of Clinton as victor rather than Trump. I think this article and the position it takes on Trump as a candidate can be wrapped up by this quote from the article, "All this has led journalist and economist Paul Krugman to believe that Hillary Clinton could suffer a fate similar to that of Al Gore 16 years ago. He was the smarter, better-educated candidate, harder working and even a better speaker, but instead his opponent became president -- a man who could get away with every impudence, lie and mistake: George W. Bush". 

bottom of page