ATHENS — Former German leader Angela Merkel described U.S. President Donald Trump as an attention seeker.
Speaking at an event organized by the Greek newspaper Kathimerini in Athens on Wednesday evening to promote the Greek translation of her memoir — “Freedom” — Merkel recalled how Trump refused to shake her hand at a meeting in the Oval Office in March 2017, but that he did so outside the room when the cameras were not rolling.
“I made the mistake of saying, ‘Donald, we should shake hands,’ and he didn’t. He wanted to draw attention to himself. That’s what he wants: to distract and have everyone look at him,” Merkel said. “You can see this in what he is doing with the tariffs. Ultimately, he must deliver good results for the American people. He has to prove his abilities, at least to his own country.”
Merkel added that Europeans “must stand united and not be intimidated when Trump imposes more tariffs on the bloc, but we should retaliate with tariffs of our own.”
“I’m not saying we should break off relations with the U.S., but we must negotiate. Even the U.S. cannot survive alone,” she said, adding: “I see a problematic development. When Vice President [JD] Vance says, ‘we are partners, and we will only support you if you agree with our concept of freedom,’ which means no rules and no controls, that is indeed a threat to our democracy.”
Merkel and Trump always had a rocky relationship. In her memoir, she wrote of Trump: “He judged everything from the perspective of the property entrepreneur he had been before politics. 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.”
“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.”
‘Woman cries at a summit’
The former German chancellor’s visit to Athens came just days ahead of the 10th anniversary of Greece’s 2015 bailout referendum.
She described her telephone conversation with former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in which she learned that Greece would hold a referendum on whether to accept the terms of the bailout from its international creditors, a move that could have ended with Greece leaving the eurozone.
Merkel said the call was the most “surprising” of her political career, and left her “speechless,” particularly when she found out that Tsipras would campaign for a “no” vote. However, she said that she and Tsipras gradually “grew closer” and that “he was honest” and “did not try to mislead her.”
The former chancellor also said that she and former U.S. President Barack Obama had different views on how to handle Greece’s mounting debt. Obama didn’t understand the legal aspects or how the EU and the European Central Bank operate differently from the Fed, she said.
“At some point, I burst out crying from the pressure,” Merkel said, adding with a smile: “A woman cries during a summit.”
Merkel said that she never wanted Greece to exit the eurozone. “I cannot imagine Europe without Greece as a strong member,” she said.
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