The one on the left will probably become the next german chancellor as this party CDU (Christian Democratic Union) will nominate him at the next federal parliament elections. A popular magazine (IIRC it was Financial Times) called him the german Trump years ago. He was a long-time chairman of the supervisory board of BlackRock.

He is famous for stating that he and the CDU will be the firewall against the far-right (and often straight-up nazi) AfD party who recently won german elections in the state of Thuringia and were 2nd place in Saxony and Brandenburg (all 3 are ex-GDR states). Recently Merz denied his firewall statement (as in “We never said that”) and that it was imposed on them from other parties.

He’s also famous for voting against the criminalization of rape within marriages, not wanting to raise taxes for rich people and flooding the zone with shit against the Green Party (part of the currently ruling coalition) who had a big influencr on the facts that Germany is not dependent on russian gas anymore, the energy prices are currently at pre-Ukrainian war level, Germany has one of the most stable energy systems in Europe, inflation is on pre-war level, renewables were ramped up immensively and the internet is finally getting modernized thanks to their broadband initiative.

Nevertheless the current government is often titulated as the worst in a long time. Mind you we had 16 years of standstill with the CDU before that, apart from the Merkel initiatives: federal-wide exit of nuclear energy after Fukushima and the abolition of mandatory Military Service and the “Wir schaffen das” refugee politics because of the War in Syria. The latter was the beginning of the radicalization of previously non-radical parts of the population as far-right parties and other groups painted a grim picture because of the refugee situation.

The bad rep of our current traffic light coalition (red labour SPD, the Greens and the yellow neoliberal and corrupt outlier FDP) is the work of a the biggest newspaper publisher Springer with it’s magazines Bild (Germans The Sun), Welt (The Sun for intellectuals) and other mags like Politico. They’re pushing aggressive propaganda against The Greens. Specifically against Robert Habeck our economy minister, an ex children book author, the architect of the green revolution here and responsible for cutting of the gas supply chain from russia. Bild basically published multiple articles against the Greens over more than 2 years every day, especially against their heat pump initiative for private homes and the exit for combustion car engines after 2035 which are both EU regulations and will come anyway.

Back to Merz. He is one of many politicians from nearly all parties in Germany whose main job in the opposition is to do the same as Bild. He doesn’t diffamate the main party SPD and surely not his buddies from the soon Niedrigverdiener of the FDP (who fucked up the political processes over the whole 3 years of the gov which even angered the EU heavily) but his target ofc was nearly solely the Greens. The main reason: Ties to the fossil industry and probably ties to The Heritage Foundation who want to take over the US.

There recently was held a conference in Berlin organised by The Republic who was the main think tank behind the Bild campaigns against the traffic-light government. The Heritage Foundation took part in it and it was a meet and greet for CDU politicians with MAGA folks. Merz is said to have a good connection with Mr. Petschner-Multari the CEO of The Republic, which he denies. After open CDU-party intern critical voices from the liberal wing he cancelled his visit to the conference.

https://www.rnd.de/politik/berlin-trumps-maga-republikaner-konferieren-mit-der-cdu-QLQTLIJQBZB2BLA2CMHBSAPJFA.html

Adding to all this Merz is repeating AfD talking points e.g. with his famous “Refugees are the reason why germans don’t get dentist appointments anymore because they all come here to get their teeth fixed”. Another recurring beast of a topic regarding Merz is the similarity to Fritz Von Papen who basically enabled Hitler in 1933.

The guy on the right is Merz’s 18 year old grandson Phillip who was an intern for him at BlackRock. Merz gave him the nickname Smithers…No not really that’s Phillip Amthor, another possibly corrupt CDU politician.

Now your up to date about the FUBAR situation in Germany.

I added a translation.