RIAS alumni Zamperoni’s new book attempts to explain Trump’s popularity for Germans

One of Germany’s leading evening news anchors Ingo Zamperoni, a RIAS alumni and former ARD TV correspondent in Washington DC, just published a riveting new book in Germany called “Anderland“ that makes a splendid effort to explain why Donald Trump is so popular in some parts of the United States — and could win re-election as President in 2020.

“I think it’s quite possible, even probable, that Trump could win a second term,” Zamperoni , 44, told a crowd of about 200 Germans at a book reading in Berlin this week for the launch of his second book about the United States. In his remarkably balanced book, Zamperoni gives German readers useful insights into why Trump won and may well win again.

“We’ve got a slightly disturbed relationship to the United States,” said Zamperoni, who was in Washington from early 2014 to late 2016. “The antipathy towards the United States and what’s going on there now is probably stronger right now than in any other country. There’s a lot of misunderstandings in Germany about the United States. We think we know the Americans well from having been there on vacation or whatever. But we really don’t.”

Zamperoni made good use of a RIAS fellowship in October 2017 to do research for his book in Texas, Washington DC and New York, among other places — revisiting at times Americans whom he had interviewed for German TV before the 2016 election and found that they were still strong backers of Trump nearly a year after the election. “There was no ‘buyer’s remorse’ among any of those I talked to again,” he said — comments that surprised many Germans.

Zamperoni, who was the keynote speaker at the RIAS media prize awards ceremony in 2017, was first a RIAS fellow on a standard exchange program back in 2004 at the age of 30. He took part on a second RIAS fellowship, a one-week long “senior editor’s program” in Texas, in 2017. After the book presentation, Zamperoni enjoyed a partial reunion with three other RIAS participants on six-member Texas trip Petra Gute from RBB, Vladimir Balzer from Deutschlandradio and RIAS Berlin Commission executive director Erik Kirschbaum. “Trump doesn’t care at all if we in Germany think he’s a fool,” said Zamperoni, whose wife and children are Americans, at the book launch. “The only thing that’s important to him is what his supporters think about him and how he’s doing.”