In her memoirs, excerpts of which were published late on Wednesday evening, the 20th of November, by the German newspaper Die Zeit, Angela Merkel, the long-serving German Chancellor, detailed her difficulties in dealing with Donald Trump, including how she sought advice from the Pope on how to deal with Trump when he was first elected US President, hoping to find a way to persuade a man who she believes has a property developer’s winner-or-loser mentality not to withdraw from the Paris climate agreements, reports Reuters.
She wrote that Trump appeared to be fascinated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders.
“Before entering politics, he saw everything from the perspective of a real estate developer,” she wrote. “Each plot of land could only be sold once, and if he didn’t get it, someone else did. That was how he saw the world.”
Pope Francis, when Merkel asked him for general advice on how to deal with people who have “fundamentally different views”, immediately understood that she was talking about Trump and his desire to withdraw from the climate agreements, she wrote.
“Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break,” the Pope said to Merkel, according to her.
When Trump took office in 2017, Merkel was one of the world’s longest-serving elected leaders and by far the most influential leader in the European Union, shaping Germany’s and the continent’s response to the eurozone debt crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s initial 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
Merkel’s unruffled demeanour and frequent references to values such as freedom and human rights have led some to dub her a true “leader of the free world” – a label usually attributed to US presidents.
The book was written before Trump’s re-election. Her memoir, “Freedom: Memories 1954-2021”, will be published in more than 30 countries on the 26th of November.
Merkel, Germany’s first female chancellor, is still popular after 16 years in office, although her reliance on Russian energy is now criticised for contributing to both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s economic difficulties. She has expressed no regrets about her policies and has been low profile since leaving office.
In her published memoirs, she talks about her many meetings with Putin, describing how he struck her as someone desperate to be taken seriously.
“I experienced him as a man who did not want to be disrespected, who was always ready to lash out,” she is quoted as saying in the book. “Others might find it childish and contemptible, others would shake their heads at it. But it only meant that Russia would never disappear from the map.”
At one point she seems to imply that Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was planned after she left office. “You’re not always going to be chancellor and then they’re going to join NATO,” Putin said of Ukraine. “And I want to prevent that.”
Angela Merkel said that some Central and Eastern European leaders were guilty of living with wishful thinking, hoping that Russia would simply cease to exist, which she understood but considered unrealistic given Russia’s nuclear weapons capacity.