Donald Trump arrived at the NATO summit throwing around his boorish, uncouth attitude. Ever aimed at creating discord, he claimed that Russia was holding Germany “captive.” In return, the country’s Chancellor Angela Merkel hit him back — 10 times harder.
Our commander-in-chief said the U.S. was “guarding (Germany) against Russia.” Reuters reported:
‘We’re supposed to be guarding against Russia and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia. We are protecting Germany, we are protecting France, we are protecting all of these countries and then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia where they are paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia. I think that is very inappropriate.’
Clearly, the president of these United States does not like strong women. He regressed to that 11-year-old bully when he interacted with Merkel.
Merkel powered back, saying her country supplied the most troops for NATO missions. Then, Merkel noted that Germany extracted itself from Russian control with the fall of the Berlin Wall, which used to divide the country.
The Guardian reported that Merkel grew up on the east side of the Berlin wall. At that time, the Soviet Union controlled East Germany. Needless to say, she knows something about Russian power and domination:
 ‘I have experienced myself how a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union. I am very happy that today we are united in freedom, the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of that we can say that we can make our independent policies and make independent decisions. That is very good, especially for people in eastern Germany.’
The chancellor went on to explain to Trump that Germany has consistently been the second largest provider of troops to NATO. Merkel also said her country has had “a strong engagement” in the Afghanistan conflict:
‘The largest part of our military capacity is offered to Nato and until today we have a strong engagement towards Afghanistan. In that we also defend the interests of the United States.’
According to Reuters, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a forum:
‘There are disagreements on trade. This is serious. My task is to try to minimize the negative impact on NATO. So far is hasn’t impacted on NATO that much, I cannot guarantee that that will not be the case in the future. The transatlantic bond is not one, there are many ties, some of them have been weakened.’
Trump was still stuck in his muddy track of contrariness. According to the Guardian, he said:
‘It should never have been allowed to happen. Germany is totally controlled by Russia because they will be getting 60-70% of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline. You tell me if that’s appropriate because I think it’s not. On top of that Germany is just paying just a little bit over 1% (of GDP on Nato defense contributions) whereas the United States is paying 4.2% of a much larger GDP. So I think that’s inappropriate also.’
Featured Image via Getty Images/Sean Gallup.
