Richard Grenell, US President Donald Trump’s special missions envoy, has offered the German Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) some “free advice”.
“Woke is dead,” Grenell wrote in a post on X on February 2 – “completely dead” even if the CDU might “not see it yet”.
He recommended the party talk about how it would “purge wokeness” from the government and withstand any criticism from German reporters about it.
“Highlight their criticism and do it again,” the 58-year-old Republican recommended.
The CDU stands to win the February 23 general election and is expected to lead the next German government.
“There’s a whole group of powerful people completely out of touch with the German people,” Grenell concluded.
My free advice for the @CDU:
Woke is dead. You may not see it yet but it’s completely dead.
Talk about how you will purge wokeness from the government. And when German reporters criticize you for it, highlight their criticism and do it again.
There’s a whole group of…
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) February 2, 2025
Grenell is intimately familiar with German politics, having served as the US ambassador to the country from 2018 to 2020 during Trump’s first presidency.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Grenell, also a former acting director of US national intelligence, worked in the private sector and as a political adviser.
In December 2024, Trump named him as his presidential special envoy for special missions. In this role he recently travelled to Venezuela and on January 31 secured the release of six US citizens detained there.
During his term as ambassador, Grenell was a controversial figure for the German Left and the largely left-leaning German media sector.
He was accused of partisanship and breaching diplomatic rules after he said in a 2018 interview he intended to strengthen conservative powers in Europe.
In 2019, Grenell criticised Germany for what he said was its continuous failure to fulfil NATO’s goal for defence spending of 2 per cent of GDP, causing outrage among German leaders.
Wolfgang Kubicki, a Liberal MP, even demanded he be thrown out of Germany at the time for “acting like the High Commissioner of an occupying power”.
He has remained a controversial figure. In a February 2024 interview, he directly accused Angela Merkel – German Chancellor from 2005 to 2021 – of bearing part of the blame for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
“Trump had three main requests which Germany did not want to fulfil: the end of Nord Stream 2, higher defence spending, and new sanctions on Iran,” Grenell told German media.
“History has shown he was right on all three accounts. If Merkel had followed us, we would not have wars in either Ukraine nor Gaza.”
At the time of writing, Grenell’s latest remarks had not drawn an official response from the CDU.
Right-wing commentators on X have expressed their hope that the party would heed the former ambassador’s advice.
“The CDU still has a chance to stop this nonsense”, one observer remarked on X.
