Trump called May and Merkel 'losers' after their
political setbacks, ex-officials say
Witnesses to Trump’s calls say he has a weakness for
leaders with absolute power and contempt for allies seeking favors
Julian
Borger in Washington
Published
onWed 1 Jul 2020 19.05 BST
Donald
Trump described Theresa May and Angela Merkel as “losers” after they suffered
political setbacks, and was repeatedly rude to them, without any of the
deference he showed to authoritarian rulers, according to former officials and
diplomats.
Those who
have witnessed the president’s phone calls and meetings with foreign leaders
said he had a weakness for monarchs and leaders with absolute power, because
that is how he would ideally like to govern. He could be contemptuous of
democratic allies, on the other hand, if they had done poorly in elections or
opinion polls, and generally viewed them as supplicants asking for personal
favours. “Catch Trump at the wrong moment, when he has a fresh grievance (ie
most days) and he can be pretty charmless,” a former European official said.
Trump’s
attitude towards May changed after the British prime minister miscalculated her
support and called a snap election in June 2017, in which she lost her
parliamentary majority. He repeatedly told aides that Merkel had been the
strongest leader in Europe until she had allowed more than a million Syrian
refugees to settle in Germany, which temporarily affected her popularity.
“I heard
myself Trump saying they were ‘losers’,” a former European diplomat said.
A former US
official said: “With May, he was perfectly normal with her until she blew it
with that election – and then he saw her as a dead woman walking.”
However,
the former official denied a CNN report this week that Trump had told Merkel
directly that she was “stupid” and told May she was “weak and lacked courage”.
“I’ve never
heard him say that on the phone,” the former official said, describing Trump’s
style with May, Merkel and also the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as “rude
and brusque” but stopping short of being “abusive”.
“He can be
rude when he thinks that he can get away with it, with no consequences to it,”
the ex-official said. “When he senses the person wants something in the phone
call, there is a vulnerability. Macron was always calling asking for
something.”
Trump was
also irritated when May asked for a strong US response against Moscow for the
poisoning of the former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal
and his daughter Yulia, using the nerve agent novichok, in Salisbury, England,
in March 2018. A British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died in July of that year after
coming in contact with novichok.
“He was
angry about Skripal,” a former US official recalled. “It was like – why is
everybody always asking me – me personally – to do things? Why isn’t anyone
else doing something?”
The Trump
administration did respond robustly to the Skripal attack, expelling 60 Russian
diplomats deemed to be intelligence officers. But it was later reported that
the president complained he had been misled by his own officials and had not
intended such a severe response.
Trump’s
aggressive phone manner with democratic allies is in marked contrast to his
consistently deferential approach to authoritarian rulers. In the view of one
former Trump aide, China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had something to offer Trump. He thought his stature was
enhanced by being seen as getting along with them.
“It’s not
that it’s like a fascination with Putin and Russia per se. It’s the image of
the person itself, and what they stand for,” the former aide said. “He wants to
be seen as somebody who can completely have his own way. And he wants to be
seen in the company of people who he sees that reflected in. People with ultimate
authority, swagger.”
“It was the
same with MBS [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman],” the former official
added. “And he’s super deferential to the Queen – unbelievably deferential and
obsequious to the Queen.”
One
significant exception to the general rule is Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu,
Israel’s democratically elected prime minister who frequently sought support
from Trump, but succeeded in doing so without enraging him.
“It’s
because of Bibi’s style,” the former official said. “Bibi – and Erdoğan is the
same way, have a way of asking for things. It makes him seem powerful because
‘only you, the great master, can do this’.”
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