At first glance, German chancellor Angela Merkel's open politicking to win the favor of Mexico's government at our expense is kind of disgusting.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit Saturday to Mexico spoke out against building walls, saying the construction of physical borders won't fix problems with immigration.

"Obviously the main reason for people leaving must be addressed on site first, which means putting up walls and cutting oneself off will not solve the problem," Merkel said, speaking in Mexico City.

"It's an issue you can study well in the history of China with the (Great) Wall of China, you can study it in the history of the Roman Empire. Essentially, only when great empires have managed to forge sensible relationships with their neighbors and to manage migration has it been a success."

Any American can see right through that suck-up gambit and come to the conclusion that the frau ought to mind her own beeswax.  After all, she ruined her own country by opening its borders to all comers and laying out the welfare goody table – while not paying her NATO dues, why should we be so stupid as to ruin ours, following her off the lemming cliff?

But a closer look at what she's really saying gives great insight to the sophistry of the left.

In two instances, she lays out reality as her premise and then with sophomoric logic delivers exactly the wrong answer.  It's an Obama-esque effort to disarm the diagnoses of problems coming from the right by begging the question.  To wit:

"Obviously the main reason for people leaving must be addressed on site first, which means putting up walls and cutting oneself off will not solve the problem," Merkel said, speaking in Mexico City.

She speaks as if the Mexican government, which makes life unlivable in Mexico, is somehow related to the U.S. plan to build a wall.  It's rubbish.  If the main reason for people leaving must be addressed first, that puts the ball squarely in the court of Mexico's corrupt government.  The wall is nothing but a U.S. reaction to the Mexican government and its unwillingness to reform itself so that people will want to live in that country.  Mexico's government is crappy and corrupt not because the U.S. wants to build walls; the U.S. is building walls because the Mexican government is crappy and corrupt and refuses to reform itself.  If the main reason for people leaving must be addressed first, that lays the problem squarely at the feet of Mexico's corrupt, cynical government, which thinks nothing of pushing emigration on its own people to relieve itself of any internal pressure for reform.  It sure as heck has nothing to do with President Trump's plan to protect the U.S.'s unguarded southern border.

Merkel's sophistry continues as she lectures the U.S. about the Great Wall of China, with some fake rewritten history:

It's an issue you can study well in the history of China with the (Great) Wall of China, you can study it in the history of the Roman Empire. Essentially, only when great empires have managed to forge sensible relationships with their neighbors and to manage migration has it been a success.

Nope, China didn't forge sensible relationships with the Mongol hordes to manage migration – China built a wall to keep invaders the hell out.  When China's leaders neglected all means of defenses against them, the Mongols eventually took over, becoming the Yuan Dynasty.  The Ming, who threw the Yuan out, were the most ardent of China's wall-builders.

But to hear Merkel tell it, making friends with the interlopers who would take your country over and "forging sensible relationships" to "manage migration" is the only way to make walls a success.  Even if you can find a scintilla of truth in that twisted up logic, the onus remains on the cynical Mexican government to "forge sensible relationships" with the U.S. in order to, oh, make the U.S. wall a success.  Or something.

The sophistry is clear enough – which goes to show that Merkel could not care less about logic, or addressing one party at a time, or keeping her nose out of other countries' business.  She's out to stir the pot up between the U.S. and Mexico as payback for President Trump's pointing out the failures of her own open-borders philosophy in Germany.

That's some ally we've got there.  Not just a hostile one, but a sophomoric one.  Let's hope President Trump reminds her of her dues-paying obligations and suggests to her to kindly look to Mexico next time a Russian invasion beckons Germany.