How she experienced Trump – “He was very fascinated by Putin”

Berlin. In her memoirs, the former Chancellor writes about important conversations during her time in office. This is how she thinks about Trump, Putin and Schröder.

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) remembers this in her paper published on Tuesday memoirs about her first meeting with the then newly elected US President Donald Trump: He asked her in the Oval Office of the White House in 2017 about her relationship with Vladimir Putin: “He was obviously very fascinated by the Russian President.” “I had the impression over the years “That the following politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits captivated him,” writes Merkel.

The subsequent one press conference turned out to be difficult. Trump reproached Germany and she responded with facts and figures. “We talked on two different levels. “Trump on the emotional side, I on the factual side… A solution to the problems raised did not seem to be his goal,” she remembers. “It seemed to me as if he was trying to make the person he was talking to feel guilty.” When he noticed that I was objecting vigorously, he suddenly ended his tirade and changed the subject. At the same time, I think he also wanted to please the person he was talking to.”

So Trump saw everything from the perspective of the real estate entrepreneur who wants to own a piece of land. “For him, all countries are 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 cooperation,” says Merkel’s autobiography with the programmatic title “Freedom”. This description describes memorable encounters with the then and future US President Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

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Angela Merkel defends her stance on Ukraine in her biography

In her memoirs, Merkel also refers to position Current developments: For example, she admits that she wanted the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris to win in the US presidential election, and that she wanted it “from the bottom of her heart,” as she writes. “Zeit” was able to publish excerpts from Merkel’s autobiography in advance.

To this day, the ex-Chancellor is criticized for her policy towards Ukraine. As Merkel writes in her book, she has the country’s desire for a quick one NATO accession tried to slow it down because it already feared a military response from Russia. About the crucial NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, when it came to a plan for candidate status for Ukraine and Georgia, she writes: “I understood the desire of the Central and Eastern European countries to become members of NATO as quickly as possible .” But: “Accepting a new member should not only bring more security to him, but also to NATO.”

She saw that Risks regarding the contractually guaranteed presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet on the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula. “Such a combination with Russian military structures had never occurred with any of the NATO membership candidates.” “In addition, only a minority of the national population supported the country’s membership in NATO at the time,” she remembers.

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“I thought it was an illusion to assume that the MAP (accession candidate status) would provide protection for Ukraine and Georgia Putin’s aggression would have been that this status would have had such a deterrent effect that Putin would have accepted the developments without doing anything. Would it have been conceivable back then in an emergency that the NATO member states would have responded militarily – with material and troops – and intervened? “Would it have been conceivable that, as Chancellor, I would have asked the German Bundestag for such a mandate for our Bundeswehr and received a majority for it?”

In the end there was a compromise, but it had a price, as Merkel writes: “The fact that Georgia and Ukraine did not receive a commitment to MAP status was a no to their hopes.” At the same time, NATO gave them a general commitment to For Putin, the prospect of their membership was a yes to NATO membership for both countries Declaration of war.”

Merkel on Schröder’s appearance in the 2005 elephant round

The scene with which Merkel came into office in 2005 was also memorable: when the then SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder spoke on television on the evening of the federal election defeat didn’t want to admit it and told the winner – albeit by a very narrow margin – in a harsh tone that his party would never help her into the Chancellery as a coalition partner.

Capital Inside by Jörg Quoos, editor-in-chief of the FUNKE central editorial team

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“I myself sat there as if I wasn’t part of it all, but as if I was watching the scene at home in front of the TV.” I kept telling myself: Don’t get into the clinch with the others, then you’ll get caught too still start to abuse your tone. It was completely clear to me that I had something Special experienced, but I believe everything rather unconsciously. “I very much doubted whether Gerhard Schröder would have behaved the same way towards a man,” recalls the woman, who would then govern for 16 years, twelve of them with the SPD as a coalition partner.