Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out about her experiences with President-elect Donald Trump and other world leaders during her time in office — often in less-than-flattering ways.
Merkel offers a laundry list of complaints about Trump in her new memoir, Freedom: Memories 1954-2021, which is set to be released on Nov. 26.
“[Trump] judged everything from the perspective of the property entrepreneur he had been before politics,” Merkel writes. “Each property could only be allocated once. If he didn’t get it, someone else did. That was also how he looked at the world.”
She continues, “For him, all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other; he did not believe that the prosperity of all could be increased through co-operation.”
Most of the former German chancellor’s complaints about the president-elect focus on a perceived unwillingness to be a team player.
At one point, Merkel says the two of them “spoke on two different levels — Trump on an emotional level, me on a factual one.”
“When he did pay attention to my arguments, it was usually only in order to construct new accusations from them,” she adds.
Merkel recalls asking for practical advice on how to deal with international disputes from Pope Francis without directly referencing her quarrels with Trump.
“Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break,” the pontiff reportedly told her. She says the advice had strongly affected her negotiations moving forward.
Merkel, who has been largely absent from the public eye since retiring from politics in 2021, told German newspaper Der Spiegel that she was deeply upset by Trump’s latest presidential victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
“It was already a disappointment for me that Hillary Clinton didn’t win in 2016,” Merkel said. “I would have liked a different outcome.”
Merkel has also recently offered a glimpse into her experiences with Russian President Vladimir Putin through her book and related interviews.
She accused Putin of being “someone who was always on guard not to be treated badly, and always ready to dish out punishment, including power games with a dog and making others wait.”
The mention of “power games with dogs” refers to a 2007 meeting between Merkel and Putin during which the Russian president brought in his black labrador, knowing that the German chancellor had a phobia of dogs.
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Merkel blocked Ukraine from joining NATO in 2008 under pressure from Russian leaders — a decision that had cascading ramifications culminating in the 2022 invasion.
“You will not be chancellor forever. And then [Ukraine and Georgia] will become NATO members. And I want to prevent that,” Merkel says Putin told her.