Flase-Flag accusation: Chancellor Merz draws anger from the Left and the Greens

"False flag operations don't just exist militarily, they also exist politically," said Merz on Wednesday at the German summit of "Handelsblatt" and "Wirtschaftswoche." He warned against “hasty conclusions.”

Green Parliamentary Secretary Irene Mihalic called the Chancellor's speculations a "bottomless impudence." She told the "Rheinische Post": "A responsible party leader would have done better to promise clarification within his own ranks." After Rausch's election, parliamentary group leader Britta Haßelmann explains that it would be "the minimum" for the chancellor and party leader of the CDU to explain what that means and how he wants to deal with it.

Left leader Ines Schwerdtner is also outraged. She told RTL and n-tv that she called the claim that votes for the AfD candidate could come from the Left, the Greens or the SPD “total nonsense”. She could “very, very certainly rule out” the fact that leftists voted for the AfD candidate. She accuses the Chancellor of distracting attention from his own problems. It is absurd that he is trying to divert the focus away from his reform policies and the CDU's social cuts.

She demands consequences from Merz. Schwerdtner said he was complaining about Berlin, about the left, about affordable living. "But he doesn't see how his own people are helping a right-wing extremist come to power here."

With Rausch, the AfD has a state parliament president in Germany for the first time. Saxony-Anhalt's CDU parliamentary group leader Sven Schulze denied that there were any votes from his party for intoxication. Rausch and the AfD, on the other hand, claim to have achieved a majority with CDU votes.