Just like at the BBC: How Germany’s public broadcasters have been faking and manipulating their Trump coverage for years: The big NIUS dossier

Resignations still exist – just not in Germany: the BBC’s leadership stepped down. The reason: a manipulative edit of a Trump speech.

German public broadcasters likewise demonize Donald J. Trump more than perhaps any other Western politician. In this dossier, NIUS documents – on the basis of extensive material – how ARD, ZDF, and their subsidiaries have been shaping the image of an authoritarian monster since 2016, abandoning basic journalistic principles: context, neutrality, factual accuracy.

Manipulating the boos – how ARD faked an audio track

The BBC edited a speech in such a way that it presented a continuous segment of Trump speaking which never actually occurred. ARD uses similar manipulation methods. In a speech Trump gave in Davos in 2018, Tagesschau deliberately manipulated the audio to make the boos sound louder. The public-broadcasting watchdog “ÖRR-Blog”, which constantly uncovers public-broadcasting fake news, placed the manipulated (loud) version and the original (quiet) version side by side.

Later, ARD even admitted that it had manipulated the audio.

The “bloodbath” – how ZDF turned an economic metaphor into a “call for violence”

To cast Trump in the worst possible light, ZDF stops at nothing. In March 2024, ZDF made a blatant false claim while reporting on a Trump campaign speech in Ohio. In that speech, Trump discussed economic policy, tariffs, and Chinese cars. Addressing the Chinese, who were building huge car factories in Mexico to sell their vehicles in the United States, he said:

“I don’t think they’re going to sell those cars into the United States without paying a tax at the border.” He continued: “You think you can hire no Americans and still sell us the cars. If I get elected, we’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every car that crosses the border – you will not be able to sell those cars. If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole country – that will be the least of it. But they will not sell those cars.”

Below you can see the comparison between heute-journal and Trump’s speech:

It is absolutely clear: this is plainly about economic policy. Trump is saying, in essence, that without him, an economic disaster awaits – “bloodbath” being a common metaphor in this context.

Trump used a perfectly normal metaphor.

But millions of viewers of Germany’s second-most important news program were presented with something that never happened. The ZDF anchor said: “He wraps his call for political violence in comments about the car industry.” Yet no such call for violence ever occurred.

In a ZDF tweet, it reads:

Fake news: Trump did not threaten violence.

Even the left-leaning outlet Correctiv stated in a fact-check that Trump had neither threatened nor called for political violence.

Nevertheless, the public broadcasters refuse to let go of their fake news. Months later – long after the “bloodbath” matter had been clarified – ZDF still tries to convince its audience that “bloodbath” referred to political carnage. In a report, ZDF again omits the context. The word “car industry” does not appear at all.

ZDF adopts the Democrats’ propaganda – and omits the crucial information in the process.

Trump called brutal gang members “animals”, not “illegal migrants”

A key pillar of the disinformation about Trump: ARD and ZDF endlessly claim that Trump incites hatred against migrants. They deliberately omit that Trump has no problem whatsoever with legal immigration. Here, too, ZDF does not hesitate to omit crucial context to portray Trump as a fascist using dehumanizing language.

In its “bloodbath” report, ZDF claims: “Some illegal immigrants are, in his view, not humans but animals.” In the background, you hear Trump say: “… but these are animals.” Even hard-line critics of illegal immigration object to calling people who cross borders illegally “animals.” So whom was Trump talking about?

Answer: about gangs notorious for their barbaric violence. See the comparison between heute-journal and Trump’s speech:

When the Phoenix interpreter loses it

How biased and Trump-hostile the atmosphere inside public broadcasting really is was revealed when a simultaneous interpreter forgot his microphone was still on. Live on air, he snapped at his colleague: “Tell me, how long are you going to stick with this shit?” The occasion was the solemn act of inauguration in January 2025 – apparently no less Trump-hostile colleague had been available.

“Deportations” deliberately mistranslated when Trump is involved

Linguistic manipulation is added to the mix: while the removal of illegal immigrants – a long-standing practice in the U.S., predating Trump – used to be translated correctly as “Abschiebungen,” public broadcasters now increasingly use the term “Deportationen”. Examples: Tagesschau: “Deportations in the USA: ‘Am I next?’” (21 April 2025), Deutschlandfunk Nova: “Under Donald Trump the ICE immigration authority is conducting massive raids. The aim is deportation.”

Indeed, “deportations” is the English word for “Abschiebungen” (from Latin deportatio, meaning “carrying away”). President Barack Obama used the word himself – see here:

Yet in Germany the word “Deportation” evokes something entirely different: the forcible expulsion or banishment of criminals, political opponents, or entire groups – above all the mass deportations of Jews to Nazi forced-labor and extermination camps.

But U.S. deportations have nothing whatsoever to do with this crime against humanity; they are the removal of mostly criminal illegal migrants. Under Obama, no one in German media spoke of “Deportationen” – they correctly said “Abschiebungen.”

Obama was even nicknamed “deporter-in-chief” because he “had hundreds of thousands of people deported.” See the video below, showing Elmar Theveßen manipulatively referring to “mass deportations” – contrasted with a Deutsche Welle report on Obama, the “deporter-in-chief”. 

Ignorance cannot be claimed here – it is obvious what is happening: “Deportationen” was part of a months-long Correctiv campaign in Germany. After suffering several legal defeats, public broadcasters have now shifted their narrative to Trump’s America. The purpose of these deliberate mistranslations is clear: to evoke associations with the Third Reich in connection with Donald Trump by speaking of “mass deportations” instead of straightforward “removals”.

Quote-card with an incomplete quote

Legal deportations – a standard rule-of-law measure – are framed as inhumane, even potentially criminal. Already in 2016, Tagesschau omitted crucial information to portray Trump as cruel. In November of that year it reported:

“The future U.S. president Trump wants to deport up to three million immigrants without valid papers immediately after taking office.” On the quote card, it read:

“We’re getting them out of our country, or we’re locking them up. But we’re getting them out because they’re here illegally.”

But in the CBS 60 Minutes interview, Trump actually spoke of criminals:

“What we’re going to do is get the people who are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers – probably 2 million, maybe even 3 million – out of our country or have them incarcerated […] But we’re getting them out of our country; they’re here illegally.”

The original quote – unaltered

So Trump wanted to deport (or jail) criminals first (“deportation of criminals first”), not simply “immigrants without valid papers”, as ARD wanted viewers to believe.

Disinformation on the “storming of the Capitol”

One can debate Trump’s role on January 6, 2021. He spoke of election fraud and initially refused to acknowledge the certified result. He had called for protests for weeks and spoke on January 6 near the White House, while Congress counted the Electoral College votes.

Midway through his speech, Trump said explicitly: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

That the BBC documentary series Panorama omitted this passage and used manipulative editing – which has now sparked a major media scandal (as NIUS reported) – went unmentioned in German media. Instead, ARD, ZDF, and Deutschlandfunk all claimed Trump had staged a kind of coup, and that his heated speech triggered the events. In the ZDF documentary “USA extrem: One Year of Donald Trump,” it was stated: “Incited by Donald Trump, thousands of his supporters stormed the seat of parliament.”

Nearly five years after the “storming of the Capitol,” this version still prevails, despite Trump’s 2021 acquittal in the impeachment trial. Senators such as Mitch McConnell argued that Trump’s words were “reprehensible” but not criminally “inciting” under First Amendment standards, which require imminent unlawful action.

One can criticize Trump’s conduct that day, but he explicitly did not call for violence and – albeit far too late – tweeted “Stay peaceful!” once the violence had begun. Yet the claim that Trump endangered democracy is still maintained today.

Five people died in connection with the events inside and outside the Capitol. Contrary to the implication, they were not victims of the intruders but came from their ranks – except for Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died shortly afterward from two strokes. In ARD’s Weltspiegel documentary “WTF, Trump?! What Will Become of America?” it was presented simply: “Five people die. One of them: Brian Sicknick.” The four dead demonstrators – including Ashli Babbitt – were not mentioned. Not even half the truth, in other words.

False claim about the dismissal of federal judges

In the podcast “Der Trump-Effekt” on 2 September 2025, ZDF claimed that President Trump had fired federal judges in Maryland. False: Trump had merely (unsuccessfully) sued the judges over an immigration ruling.

ZDF dedicated an entire podcast to Elmar Theveßen, in which he is allowed to constantly rail against Trump.

There were no dismissals. ZDF admitted this online under “Corrections and Clarifications,” which few likely noticed.

Trump remark about violence against an intra-party critic twisted

When Trump, in October 2024, referred to his intra-party critic (and Kamala Harris supporter) Liz Cheney as a “radical warmonger” and said he would like to see how she feels when looking down the barrels of guns, ZDF reported: “Trump fantasizes about violence against critic.” Yet the context made clear that he was accusing her of sending others to war while having no idea what that means for those affected. The full quote:

“Let’s stand her there with a rifle, with nine barrels pointed at her. OK? Let’s see how she likes it when the guns are pointed at her face. They’re all warmongers when they’re sitting in a nice building in Washington saying, ‘Oh well, let’s send 10,000 soldiers straight into the jaws of the enemy.’”

Trump was saying only that Liz Cheney would not support wars if she herself had to face weapons at the front. As many newspapers did, ZDF turned this into a threat – a deliberate distortion of reality.

Endless comparisons of Trump with Hitler, Nazis, fascists

It is the supreme discipline of Germany’s “coming-to-terms-with-the-past” culture: not only Spiegel and Stern – which have portrayed Trump as the ultimate evil on many covers – but also the public broadcasters repeatedly draw comparisons to the Third Reich. Three examples:

In the BR documentary “How Much Nazi Ideology Is in Trump’s USA?” the question is raised whether the US is already “on its way to its Third Reich”. Carefully selected “experts” claim that “fascism” reigns in America, that Trump is an “autocrat,” and that he is trying to do “what Mussolini tried in Italy in the early 1920s and what Hitler implemented in Germany after 1933”. The key question, they say, is “not whether Trump will be the next Hitler, but whether American democracy is strong enough to resist this authoritarian overhaul”.

Explicitly, they claim not to equate Trump with Hitler, yet they do so constantly: Hitler’s name is mentioned, Hitler is shown. The questions posed are “How much Nazi ideology is already in Trump’s USA?” and “How much Nazi ideology is in Stephen Miller?” with Miller portrayed as the successor to the Reich propaganda minister: Commentators see similarities to Goebbels’ speeches.

In heute-journal, Marietta Slomka asked: “When you look at these images from the U.S., these memes, these banners with the huge photo of Trump, or the calls ‘Trust in Trump!’ – that certainly looks like a Führer cult, which is basically a hallmark of fascism, right? Or is that concept still too broad here?” The surprising reply from the expert in Toronto: “No, the concept fits!”

On October 2, 2025, Annika Brockschmidt said on Deutschlandfunk that Trump uses “fascist rhetoric,” his policies are fascist, and the entire MAGA movement is fascist anyway. He had spoken of a “war from within,” wanted the military to be “the executive arm of the regime,” and sought to “suppress Trump’s political opposition”.

The tone-setter: USA “expert” and Trump-hater Elmar Theveßen

The undisputed drum major of anti-Trump agitation is Elmar Theveßen, head of the ZDF bureau in Washington and a regular guest on the talk shows of Maybrit Illner and Markus Lanz.

Although the country already experienced four years of Trump in the White House, Theveßen remains convinced: “Personally, I consider him a fascist who, as an authoritarian ruler, wants to destroy American democracy with a wrecking ball.” His book bears the fitting title: The Destruction of America: How Donald Trump Is Changing His Country and the World Forever.

His favorite thesis, which shapes all his commentary, he stated already in the ZDF year-end review “Album 2016: Trump is – attention, commentary! – a clear and immediate threat to his country and the rest of the world”.

“Attention, commentary!” – this disclaimer should really appear on every report about Donald Trump. When necessary, events are shortened or simply misrepresented. After all, a Harvard study found in 2017 that ARD’s reporting on Trump’s first 100 days in office was the most negative of all media analyzed. Ninety-eight percent (!) of evaluative reports were negative toward Trump.

Also read:
Linke Schlagseite, manipulierte Videos und Rücktritt des Chefs: US-Präsident Trump droht BBC mit Milliarden-Klage