There have been better times: Donald Trump wins the US elections, and in Germany the coalition collapses with an unprecedented bang - all in the space of a few hours.
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Has there ever been a day on which political events have come so thick and fast as on 6 November? Hardly!
Anyone who spent the night of 5 to 6 November watching the US elections with cautious hopes for Kamala Harris will probably have been disillusioned the following morning not only by Donald Trump's rapid and unexpectedly high election victory, but also by the rapid succession of congratulations for the US Republican.
The same people who had more or less bluntly labelled Trump a crazy clown and racist just before the election were suddenly not above congratulating the future re-president on his victory as quickly as possible once it was clear who had won the election. Some, like the French head of state Emmanuel Macron, even did so before the official election results were even available. You could almost think that the heads of state and government were in a race to see who would congratulate Trump first.
That's what we call realpolitik. After all, you don't want to mess things up with the man who will soon be the most powerful man in the world again, and a little bit of fawning can't hurt.
On Wednesday evening, however, the US elections were already old news when it was announced shortly after 8.00 pm that the German Chancellor had just kicked out his Finance Minister, thus sealing the end of the so-called "traffic light coalition".
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