In her reflections, Angela Merkel offered a candid assessment of how former U.S. President Donald Trump viewed the world. “He judged everything from the perspective of the property entrepreneur he had been before politics,” she remarked. “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.”
Merkel elaborated on Trump’s zero-sum mindset, stating, “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.”
Merkel’s insights carry significant weight due to the respect she garnered throughout her tenure, particularly among European leaders. As political figures around the world anticipate the possibility of a second Trump presidency, her observations on how to handle him will likely be closely studied.
The former German chancellor and leader of the Christian Democratic Union found dealing with Trump so complex that she sought guidance from an unexpected source: Pope Francis.
“Without naming names, I asked him how he would handle fundamentally differing opinions in a group of important personalities,” Merkel recounted, referring to a period when Trump was considering pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. “He understood me immediately and gave me straightforward advice: ‘Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break.’”
“I liked the imagery,” Merkel admitted. She even shared it with Trump later, saying, “Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break.” With this philosophy in mind, Merkel aimed to approach her tough negotiations on the Paris Agreement with Trump during the G20 summit in Hamburg.
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