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This is the German tweet angering Trump supporters

The Local Germany
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This is the German tweet angering Trump supporters
Photo: Screenshot from Twitter

A letter on social media from "the people of Germany" about Tuesday's US presidential election is making some red-state Americans quite red in the face.

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The letter, which is being shared on Twitter and Facebook by Germans and others, states: “Dear Americans. Go ahead, vote for the guy with the loud voice who hates minorities, threatens to imprison opponents, doesn’t give a fuck about democracy, and claims he alone can fix everything. What could possibly go wrong? Good luck.”

The letter ends with the hashtag #beentheredonethat.
The message was originally created by a 44-year-old man, calling himself “Johan Franklin”, from Hamburg, who now works in San Diego in IT, according to broadcaster N-tv.
 
He posted the tweet on Friday and it has since gone viral, being re-tweeted thousands of time. Even Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling shared the message.
 
Other social media users were not so keen on the letter, writing that the author was a "fucking clown just like Merkel who is destroying Germany with her open door policy".
Some took issue with the comparison to Adolf Hitler.
Franklin later posted a second note, having to explain that he was in fact German and was not working for Hillary Clinton after he said he received death threats.
 
Franklin also explained in his second message why he chose the Hitler comparison.
 
“You can’t compare Trump (or anybody) to the monster that was Hitler, and I didn’t mean it literally… But I see a lot of similarities in the way Trump and Hitler gained momentum, amassed followers around them despite so many telltale signs that all is not right.”
 
Trump has drawn comparisons to Hitler both inside and outside Germany, including in comedian Jan Böhmermann’s viral “Be Deutsch” video, with the line: “Maniacs with wicked hair. Ja, ja, ja we have already been there”.
 
Other Germans also seemed to have a pessimistic view of the vote going on across the pond. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) at one point on Tuesday morning posted a headline online reading “Angst vor einem Bürgerkrieg” - Fear of a civil war. FAZ later changed the headline to “Fear of the morning after”.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung posted a video on their homepage, declaring “Germany would not be prepared to have Trump in the White House”.
 
Der Spiegel’s magazine for this week depicted Clinton and Trump, covered in mud and looking road-weary with the headline: “The Next President: Script of a Tragedy”.
 

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