BERLIN (AP) — Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she felt “sorrow” at Donald Trump’s return to energy and recollects that each assembly with him was “a competition: you or me.”
In an interview with German weekly Der Spiegel printed Friday, Merkel mentioned that Trump “is a challenge for the world, particularly for multilateralism.”
“What awaits us now is really not easy,” she mentioned, as a result of “the strongest economy in the world stands behind this president” with the greenback as a dominant forex.
Merkel labored with 4 American presidents whereas she was German chancellor. She was in energy all through Trump’s first time period — simply essentially the most tense interval for German-U.S. relations of her 16 years in workplace, which led to late 2021.
She recalled as “a typical scene” a famously awkward second within the Oval Workplace when she first visited Trump on the White Home in March 2017. Photographers shouted “handshake!” and Merkel quietly requested Trump: “Do you want to have a handshake?” There was no response from Trump, who regarded forward together with his palms clasped.
“I tried to coax him into a handshake for the photographers because I thought in my constructive way that maybe he hadn’t noticed they wanted such a picture,” Merkel was quoted as saying. “But of course his refusal was calculation.”
The pair did shake palms at different factors in the course of the go to.
Requested what a German chancellor ought to find out about coping with Trump, Merkel mentioned he was very curious and needed particulars — “but only to read them for his own advantage, to find arguments that strengthen him and weaken others.”
“The more people there were in the room, the greater was his urge to be the winner,” she added. “You can’t chat with him. Every meeting is a competition: you or me.”
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Merkel mentioned she felt “sorrow” at Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris within the Nov. 5 presidential election. “It was already a disappointment for me that Hillary Clinton didn’t win in 2016. I would have liked a different outcome.”
The 70-year-old Merkel, a center-right Christian Democrat who has usually saved a low profile since leaving workplace, is because of launch her memoirs subsequent week.
