Memoir of former German chancellor recalls US president’s soft spot for tyrants and apparent fascination with Putin
Like many people, Angela Merkel at first made the mistake of thinking Trump was normal.
Angela Merkel’s first mistake with Donald Trump, she says in her keenly awaited new memoir, was treating him as if he were “completely normal”, but she quickly learned of his “emotional” nature and soft spot for authoritarians and tyrants. [ ... ] Now unbound by diplomatic niceties, Merkel sizes up Trump as “emotional” and driven by grievance and neediness, in contrast to her “factual” approach. “It seemed that his main aim was to make the person he was talking to feel guilty … At the same time I had the impression … that he also wanted the person he was talking with to like him.” Rather than trying to build bridges with traditional allies, Merkel writes, “Trump was apparently fascinated with the Russian president”, and she notes that “politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits had him in their thrall”. On the flight home after their first talks, a deflated Merkel concluded that Trump “looked at everything like the real estate developer he was before he entered politics” – as a zero-sum game. “For him, all countries were rivals in which the success of one meant the failure of another. He didn’t think that prosperity could be increased for all through cooperation.”
