安格拉•梅克爾

Freedom by Angela Merkel — a paean to a bygone halcyon age

The former German chancellor’s remarkable story is undermined by a failure to admit mistakes — though she does not pull her punches on Putin and Trump

When Angela Merkel met Donald Trump in 2017, reporters gathered in the Oval Office witnessed the bizarre spectacle of the US president refusing to shake the German chancellor’s hand.

Even after Merkel quietly suggested they do so, for the cameras, Trump ignored her. She instantly regretted saying anything. “I had acted as though I were having a discussion with someone completely normal,” she recalls.

Merkel’s autobiography Freedom can be a tame affair, with little of the dirt-dishing and score-settling one expects from such books. But when it comes to Trump — and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president — she rarely pulls her punches. She writes how Trump kept asking her what Putin was like: he was “clearly fascinated” by the Russian, “captivated by politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits”.

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