In an insider's report on the difficult relationship between Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Donald Trump are some exciting details about the German-American relationship - and over the last few weeks of the presidency of Trump's predecessor Barack Obama.
According to an article in the "New Yorker", which refers to former employees of the Obama administration and German government sources, Obama urged the Chancellor in the light of the election victory of Donald Trump in the fall of 2016 to continue after the general election in the summer of 2017.
Charles Kupchan, then Obama's European affairs colleague on the National Security Council, said the US president was "obsessed by the fate of Europe in his last year in office". Eight days after Trump's election, Obama and Merkel met in Berlin's Hotel Adlon for a three-hour dinner. Obama said he hopes for a fourth term of Merkel.
"I think the Chancellor listened very carefully to Obama," one close to her told the New Yorker. A few days later, Merkel had announced that she would once again compete for the chancellorship as CDU's top candidate in September.
"Do not say I never gave you something"
The interviewees also revealed to the New Yorker more anecdotes about the difficult cooperation between the Chancellor and the incumbent US President Trump.
REUTERS / Federal Government / Jesco Denzel
Angela Merkel, Donald Trump at the G7 summit
At the G7 summit in Canada in June 2018, the iconic photo was taken with Merkel and Trump, in which the Chancellor bends low over the table to a defiant US president. According to the US political scientist Ian Bremmer, this event also saw the following scene: Trump threw Merkel two candies on the table in passing, allegedly with the words: "Here Angela, do not say I never gave you anything." The White House later declared that the president was joking.
The thing with the alleged trillions of debt
Merkel tried in a direct meeting with Trump to explain to him the Middle East conflict. With rather moderate success. "She talks about things where you get the impression that he does not quite understand them," said a veteran German government employee the magazine. "It seemed like she was expecting too much from her listener." However, the location and timing of this traditional encounter are not clearly visible in the article.
At Merkel's first visit to the Oval Office in March 2017, Trump refused to shake hands with the German Chancellor before the photojournalists. After the cameras were gone, Trump is said to have said, "Angela, you owe me a trillion dollars." A White House spokesman denied the wording, but the literal sense did not.
Trump had been provided with a figure before the meeting, how much more money would have been sent to NATO, all members had since 2006, paid two percent of its gross domestic product for military spending. So the alleged claim should have come about. In fact, the two-percent target is a requirement that should apply only from 2024.