Germany’s main Carnival parades got underway Monday in the face of some windy weather, with floats poking fun at U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May.
Organizers trimmed some frills from the annual parades because of the weather front across western Germany. Parades in the traditional Carnival strongholds of Mainz, Cologne and Duesseldorf cut horses from Monday’s events. Cologne also decided to do without flags and signs, while the parades in Duesseldorf and Muenster were delayed for around two hours.
Some smaller parades, such as those in Bottrop and Fulda, were canceled altogether.
Revelers weren’t letting the poor weather dampen the traditional Carnival irreverence.
In Duesseldorf, one float portrayed a naked Trump as the guardian angel of a Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman clutching a bloody chainsaw. That was a reference to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The kingdom denies that the crown prince knew of a plot to kill Khashoggi.
Another float showed Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin ripping up a nuclear arms treaty. And a few weeks before Britain is due to leave the European Union, May was depicted with a long nose impaling a man wearing a Union Jack hat and carrying briefcases marked “economy.”q
