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The situation in the morning: A pretty bad week for Donald Trump

2022-12-20T05:05:12.288Z


Will Donald Trump be indicted - and will his tax returns be released? Is Vladimir Putin planning a new offensive on Kyiv? And what is Elon Musk actually doing? This is the situation on Tuesday.


Is a new Russian attack on Kyiv imminent?

The exhaustion in the face of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine is particularly noticeable in Germany at the moment - but there is currently little reason for hopes that the war could possibly soon be over and settled in negotiations.

Vladimir Putin's visit to neighboring Belarus suggests that the Russian president is increasing pressure on his Minsk counterpart Alexander Lukashenko to get involved in the war:

Lukashenko has been in power for 28 years and he is dependent on Putin.

So far he has allowed Russian troops to attack Ukraine from Belarusian territory.

However, he did not send his own troops into battle;

he would have his own population massively against him.

Most recently, he had to publicly contradict the impression that the Russians controlled everything in Belarus anyway – which in itself is a sign of weakness.

But can Lukashenko escape the Russian pressure?

Putin was accompanied by his foreign and defense ministers.

It was unclear what the purpose of the visit was, but

Ukraine has been warning for days that either a new Russian offensive on Kiev could be imminent – ​​or an attack on western arms supplies in western Ukraine

;

maybe even in January.

In any case, there is no reason to assume that the fighting will soon be exhausted.

For Germany and NATO, the question is once again whether military support for Ukraine does not need to be increased again.

And then of course Germany has to ask itself these days how it can actually support itself militarily: Since not a single one of the 18 "Puma" tanks in the Bundeswehr was ready for use by the NATO intervention force, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht is now fleeing to the front as reported by my colleagues Matthias Gebauer and Marina Kormbaki.

  • "Total failure" in the infantry fighting vehicle "Puma": Lambrecht tried to flee to the front 

You can find more news and background information on the war in Ukraine here:

  • The latest reports from the night:

    Today is the 300th day of the war.

    According to Selenskyj, almost 99,000 Russian soldiers have died so far.

    And: The Kremlin boss talks about an "extremely difficult" situation.

    The overview.

  • Star architect Norman Foster is presenting pilot projects for the reconstruction of the city in Kharkiv:

    there is still no end in sight to the war in Ukraine.

    But the mayor of Kharkiv and British architect Norman Foster are already working on a reconstruction plan.

    Then there was a meeting in town.

  • A cap full of holes:

    after a great deal of negotiation drama, the EU energy ministers decided on a gas price cap that is unlikely to cap anything anymore.

    Unfortunately, the really clever decisions of the day hardly get any attention. 

Bad news for Trump

Donald Trump is to be indicted, among other things for

inciting a riot

: This is the wish of a majority in the US Congress's investigative committee on the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The committee's last meeting was on Monday - and at the end there were The Democrats, but also Republicans like Liz Cheney, cast a clear vote: They recommend that the Justice Department

indict Trump on four counts

.

It is uncertain whether this will happen: Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special prosecutor to examine an indictment.

Many Democrats fear that an indictment would even help Trump because it mobilizes his base.

And yet, what the Congressional Committee has unearthed in recent months is an abyss of undemocratic behavior.

The committee's decision is historic

.

On Thursday, the committee of inquiry will also publish its report - with many new testimonies about Trump's behavior that day.

The annoyances and problems have been piling up for the ex-president for weeks

.

Many of his party friends also blamed him for the Republicans' poor performance in the midterm elections.

In polls, he was recently well behind his internal party challenger Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.

The announcement of his presidential candidacy has not yet given Trump the tailwind he was hoping for.

And this week he has one difficult appointment after another.

This Tuesday, another House of Representatives committee will decide what to do with Donald Trump's tax returns.

It is quite possible that they will be published.

Trump had been trying to prevent that for years.

Now his tax documents from six years could come to the public and provide his opponents with new fodder

.

Does that mean we no longer have to reckon with Trump in 2024?

Of course that would be nonsense.

After the experiences of the past seven years, hopefully nobody will make that mistake again.

  • Investigation into the storming of the Capitol: Trump is now threatened with imprisonment – ​​and a ban from office 

Judgment against a concentration camp secretary

In recent years, court proceedings against National Socialist perpetrators have often been said to be perhaps the last.

This time it could be true: after 40 days of trials, the verdict in the case against the former concentration camp secretary Irmgard Furchner was handed down today.

The allegation: from June 1943 to April 1945, you assisted in the insidious, cruel and attempted murder of 11,380 prisoners.

The accused does not want to be held accountable for her voluntary work as a shorthand typist in the headquarters of the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdańsk, a job that dates back 77 years.

She defended herself with all means, complained to the prosecutor and the judge.

My colleague Julia Jüttner, who accompanied the trial for SPIEGEL, explains in this text why it is right that suspected Nazi criminals still have to stand trial in 2022.

It's not about revenge, it's about the future,

Julia writes: »The crimes of the Shoah are slowly fading into the background.

Discrimination, exclusion, xenophobic, right-wing, anti-Semitic crimes are omnipresent in Germany.

The murder of Walter Lübcke, the assassination attempt in Halle, the attack in Hanau.

Where racism can lead must remain in the consciousness of all generations.

A process like this also helps here.«

  • Former concentration camp secretary in court: Why a trial is still right 77 years after the end of the war 

Here is the current quiz of the day

The starting question today: Which parliamentary group has the most direct mandates in the German Bundestag?

Loser of the day...

... is Elon Musk

, who, with his takeover of the social network Twitter, opened up a political-cultural drama that threatens to engulf himself.

As Twitter boss, Musk behaves like a tyrant

who lets his subjects vote, then listens to them again, then arbitrarily changes the rules and simply has unpopular users blocked with flimsy arguments.

He had a user who had programmed a bot with publicly available data that made the flight movements of Musk and other super-rich people traceable, banned from the platform – as well as journalists who linked the account or simply confronted the great superuser with their research.

Musk, who once described himself as politically independent, recently called for Republicans to be voted on and hung out with accounts on the platform that spread conspiracy theories.

Musk is not only damaging the value of the platform, which was bought at the inflated price of 45 billion dollars, but also his other company empire

: shares in the car manufacturer Tesla have been falling for weeks.

Musk's political change could deter potential buyers.

And so it is no wonder that Musk recently had a vote on whether he should not leave the post as CEO of Twitter to someone else.

The majority of users agreed with that.

Now the question is whether Musk really keeps his hands off Twitter on a day-to-day basis (it's hard to imagine) - and what's behind the rumor that Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is to succeed him.

The show must go on.

But whether Twitter and Tesla will survive the show remains to be seen.

The latest news from the night

  • Lauterbach apparently wants to change price rules for children's medicines:

    full hospitals and doctor's offices but no fever juice: recently there have been bottlenecks in medicines for children but also for adults.

    Health Minister Karl Lauterbach now wants to take countermeasures.

  • Jury finds Harvey Weinstein guilty on three counts - including rape:

    The verdict was reached in the second trial against Harvey Weinstein.

    The former Hollywood producer was found guilty on three counts of sex crimes in Los Angeles.

    But there was also an acquittal.

  • 23-year-old after throwing eggs at King Charles III.

    accused:

    He is said to have several eggs on Charles III in York, England.

    have thrown.

    A man now has to answer for this in court – he faces several months in prison.

    The eggs just missed the king.

The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today

  • »The ideal world is over«:

    Fewer toys, more used than new: inflation and the energy crisis mean that Germany's mothers and fathers are making tighter calculations for the festival.

    New consumption data show what else has changed when it comes to Christmas shopping.

  • What's Behind the Candy Store Boom?

    Chocolate snacks from the USA, biscuits from Japan, sweets from India: brightly colored candy stores are vying for young buyers in the inner cities.

    Your customers are looking for borderline experiences – and a counterpoint to healthy food.

  • Here's the blueprint for wildlife conservation:

    Explore the archipelago to explore how biodiversity loss could be halted.

    He is a cornucopia of life and well protected.

    However, the islands are not safe from exploitation.

  • From the forest to the scaffold:

    is the life of a robber funny?

    No way: bandits like Mathias Kneissl or »Schinderhannes« were mostly driven by poverty and ended up falling victim to the guillotine.

    Popular transfiguration made rude legends out of criminals.

I wish you a good start into the day.

Yours, Mathieu von Rohr

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2022-12-20

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