Douglas Macgregor said Angela Merkel was “more concerned about providing free services to millions of unwanted Muslim invaders” than the military.

President Trump’s pick for US ambassador to Germany accused Angela Merkel of prioritizing “unwanted Muslim invaders” over military aid and said Muslim migrants wanted to turn Europe “into an Islamic state.”
The White House on Monday announced that Col. Douglas Macgregor, a former Army tank commander, would succeed Richard Grennel as the US ambassador to European Union’s largest economy, saying he is “widely recognized as an expert on force design and grand strategy.”
Macgregor, a frequent guest on Fox News, has accused both Germany and the EU’s immigration policies of being too welcoming to Muslim migrants, claiming that they have “the goal of eventually turning Europe into an Islamic state.”
In a series of comments unearthed by CNN, Macregor in 2018 attacked Chancellor Merkel’s decision to welcome hundreds of thousands of refugees to Germany during the migrant crisis, claiming she was “more concerned about providing free services to millions of unwanted Muslim invaders, to be blunt, than it does about its own armed forces in the defense of its country.”
He told a podcast that Germany was “spending money, but they have practically no armed forces, their army, their air force, both are terribly demoralized.”
In 2015, Macregor complained that the EU was providing “very luxurious and extremely expensive welfare” to Muslim refugees during the migrant crisis and said “these people are not coming to assimilate or become Europeans — quite the opposite. They’re coming to take over whatever they can get.”
Similarly, in 2016, he said “these people [Muslim migrants] are not coming to assimilate and become part of Europe.
“They’re coming to benefit to consume and to establish themselves inside other people’s countries with the goal of eventually turning Europe into an Islamic state. That’s a bad thing for the West. It’s a bad thing for Europeans.”
Macregor is an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s move to withdraw thousands of troops from Germany.
In 2018, he told a podcast that the US should “make it clear to them [Germany] that we are not going to be the first responder” and said “the Germans, like the Koreans and the Japanese, are tired of this American troop presence on their soil,” calling for a “change our relationship with Germany in terms of military power.”
A year later he told Fox News: “We will continue to be allied and we will support, but we’re not going to rush hundreds of thousands of troops to the Polish border to deal with the Russians.
“The Germans, thanks to us, don’t feel obligated to defend themselves. And the President has simply said, ‘look, why should the American taxpayer defend you if you aren’t willing to defend yourself?'”
Macregor has not responded to Business Insider’s request for comment.
His appointment comes amid months of tension between Washington and Berlin after Merkel’s government reacted angrily to President Trump’s decision to withdraw nearly 12,000 troops from Germany.
Johann Wadephul, a senior figure in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, said: “We expect our leading ally to act as a model, with orientation and balance — not maximum pressure. You don’t treat partners like this.”
Peter Beyer, Germany’s Coordinator of Transatlantic Cooperation, said the move was “completely unacceptable.”
A report published last week by London-based think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said that Germany no longer believed it could expect the US’ help against the threat of Russia and China.
The report said Germany “is on the frontline” in the West’s efforts to repel interference from the Kremlin and Beijing, but “with President Donald Trump well into his fourth year as president, it no longer feels it can rely on the US to underpin its security.”
Andreas Michaelis, Germany’s ambassador to the UK, recently told Business Insider that “shortcomings” in Germany’s relationship with the US meant that working with the Trump administration is now “not easy.”
“With all the shortcomings in terms of information policy, and things being decided without consultation, this untidiness that has crept into the relationship is something that worries us.”
Getty
Macregor has expressed views on other major issues in European geopolitics that fall outside of the mainstream.
In 2014, weeks after Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea, he told Kremlin-owned media outlet Russia Today that eastern and southern Ukrainians were “clearly Russian” and “should be allowed to join Russia” — a position not reflected in US foreign policy.
During his appearances on Fox News, Macregor has also promoted right-wing conspiracy theories.
In June 2019, Macgregor said that Democrats were plotting to alter the demographics of the US for electoral advantage, echoing the Great Replacement conspiracy, a far-right dogma that claims, without evidence, that progressives are secretly plotting to replace white Americans with non-white Americans.
Macgregor in December spread unfounded allegations about George Soros, the Jewish financier who is a frequent target of conspiracy theories both in the US and Europe. 
He claimed that Soros “has funded or helped fund these massive migrations out of Central America” and so bears partial “responsibility for the massive criminality pouring into the United States from Mexico.”