In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalled her impression of Donald Trump during his first term in the White House, saying the new American president-elect displayed a “fascination with the sheer power” of strongmen like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The way he spoke about Putin, the way he spoke about the North Korean (leader) – obviously apart from critical remarks he made – there was always a kind of fascination with the sheer power of what these people could do,” Merkel said in a wide-ranging interview.
Merkel also discussed her new memoir, “Freedom,” which reflects on her 16 years as the first woman to lead Europe’s largest economy. During her premiership, the continent weathered multiple crises—from a pandemic to the economy, from migration to the climate. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine shortly after she left government has cast some of her policies in a more negative light and prompted questions about how much Germany depended on inexpensive Russian gas. Merkel describes how her life divides nicely into two parts in the book.
In communist East Germany, she studied and worked as a chemist for the first thirty-five years of her life. However, she has lived in a free, liberal democracy for the last 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a system that she now believes is in danger. Liberal democracies are currently being attacked. “There is pressure on them,” Merkel told CNN.
