Tag: Angela Merkel

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In his sights were Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron. Based on everything he's uttered or tweeted before, during, and after this G7 summit, it seems when Mr Macron, Mr Trudeau or Mrs Merkel say something, the president of the United States takes note. As he left the summit, Mr Trump commented on how his relationships were faring with other leaders, saying of Mrs Merkel, Mr Macron and Mr Trudeau: "We have a great relationship. Neither did Mrs May have a formal one-on-one meeting with the president during the summit, despite holding such meetings with each of the other leaders present. Mr Trump had bilateral meetings with Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau. The uncomfortable reality for Number 10 is that Mr Trump is selective about who he sits down with. Even in her concluding comments, the most Mrs May could say was that she'd had "brief words" with the president in which he said he was looking forward to his upcoming visit to the UK. :: Photo shared by Angela Merkel hints at tension at G7 In Trump's politics of the personal, failure to get attention is a problem if you want to have any chance of influencing him - special relationships in his world are about individuals, not historic convention. :: Trump's tariffs - What you need to know Mr Trump, in particular, admires power. A seat at the top table means very little if the person sitting there is barely heard.

Trudeau 'stabbed us in back' on trade, says Trump chief economic adviser Read more But a day after Trump left a trail of diplomatic chaos from Canada to Singapore, the site of his summit with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, a picture of world leaders apparently confronting Trump dominated reactions to the G7 summit. It shows Trump, arms folded and eyes glaring, sitting while around him stand a group of world leaders and their advisers. Departing Washington on Friday, Trump called for Russia to be readmitted to the G7, four years after it was thrown out over the annexation of Crimea. In the picture released by Merkel, John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, stands at the president’s right. The president made it clear today. The release of the picture caused animated commentary around the world about body language and what it might say about relations between the US and its allies in the Trump era. It was followed on Sunday by a furious attack on Trudeau by Trump’s leading economic advisers. Fabian Reinbold (@fabreinbold) One scene - four different perspectives #G7 1) by Merkel‘s team ?? 2) by Macron’s team ?? 3) by Conte’s team ?? 4) by Trump’s team ?? pic.twitter.com/q3qaSfaiQS June 9, 2018 But every picture tells a story. Other images of the same gathering suggested a more relaxed interaction, Merkel smiling and Trump making eye contact while Trudeau, also smiling, stood by. In March 2017, Merkel’s first visit to the White House saw Trump either fail to hear or ignore the chancellor’s offer to shake hands.

Photos released by the White House, Germany and Canada tell different stories about President Donald Trump's relationship with the G7 world leaders.

Photos released by the White House, Germany and Canada tell different stories about President Donald Trump's relationship with the G7 world leaders.

But he’s inclined to see it as a question of personal chemistry. Even this Putin stuff, a lot of it is, ‘I think I get on with him, I think I could deal with him.’ “It’s a belief in his personal responsibility to shape things in his favour. As a businessman, as a dealmaker, as someone who’s been involved in real estate deals all his life, I think those kind of personal relationships he builds up are important to him, so I wouldn’t undervalue it all. A White House source said Macron and Abe, the prime minister of Japan, have spoken to the president by phone more often than any other leader. There’s certainly an argument to be made in Japan that Abe has bent over backwards to court Trump yet on several crucial issues, like North Korea, Japan is outside the room looking in instead of inside the room looking out.” Others who cosy up to Trump could meet a similar fate. The Axios website reported: “Trump finds Japan’s trade practices and regulations to be very irksome. But he has a great personal chemistry with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, and would likely be going far harder on the country if their relationship were tense.” Abe was very good at the theatrics but once Trump’s priorities cut against Japan’s interests, it didn’t count for much Dan Kurtz-Phelan, Foreign Affairs magazine As for Macron, there will be a tangible measure of success or failure next month when Trump decides whether to heed his pleas to rescue the Iran nuclear deal. But while the French leader embraced Trump, he proceeded to skewer Trumpism in a speech to a joint meeting of Congress that gave a rousing defence of the liberal world order and predicted that America will one day return to the Paris climate agreement. May was the first foreign leader to visit Trump as president but things have cooled since then. Trump’s one-day “working visit” to the UK on 13 July falls short of the state visit once promised.

Today in 5 Lines During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Trump criticized the trade relationship between the United States and Germany and other European nations. The Republican-led House Intelligence Committee released a redacted version of their report on the Russia investigation that finds no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. In a historic meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-In, the two leaders promised to end their decades-long rivalry, and pledged to begin the process of denuclearization. Today on The Atlantic The Beginning of the End: In 2004, Comedian Bill Cosby delivered an address that would come to be known as the “Pound Cake” speech. It ultimately led to his downfall. (Adam Serwer) Don’t Hold Your Breath: North and South Korea have vowed to bring an end to the Korean war by 2019. But there’s a reason a peace treaty hasn’t happened in 65 years. (Uri Friedman) The DNA of a Serial Killer: After a decades-long manhunt, authorities believe they have arrested the Golden State Killer. A genealogy website helped them do it. (Sarah Zhang) Three Erroneous Claims: Conor Friedersdorf sets the record straight after a recent column mischaracterized the views of many conservatives on issues of race, gender, and free speech.

Grenell, whose nomination had been in limbo since last year, was confirmed in a vote of 56 to 42, a day before German chancellor Angela Merkel is due to arrive in Washington for a much-anticipated visit with Trump. The Berlin post had been vacant for 15 months – the longest such period in postwar German history – amid opposition from Democrats to Grenell’s often controversial remarks on Twitter. Grenell’s confirmation made him the first openly gay appointee of the Trump administration. They say opposites attract … but nobody told Trump and Merkel Read more An often polarizing figure, Grenell has a history of sparring with reporters on Twitter and has come under scrutiny for making derogatory comments about prominent women. In tweets he later deleted, Grenell stated that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow “needs to take a breath and put on a necklace” and suggested former first lady Michelle Obama, a fitness devotee, was “sweating on the East Room carpet”. Grenell also criticized the appearances of Hillary Clinton and Callista Gingrich. In recent months he has frequently used his Twitter account to comment on German affairs – most recently admonishing the country for not joining American, British and French forces in airstrikes on Syria earlier this month. Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) French and British forces join the U.S. in striking Syria for a heinous chemical weapons attack on civilians. Germany should have joined this P3 group, too. I think we can be confident that [Grenell] can communicate Trump’s position to the Germans.

Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party won 134 of the legislature’s 199 seats in Sunday’s election, ensuring it has the number of votes to pass major reforms and constitutional changes unilaterally. Hungarian political analysts and Fidesz officials said they widely expected their now four-term prime minister to do both. A spokesman for Mr. Orban said the prime minister would tighten restrictions preventing NGOs from getting involved in politics. There were hardly any bright spots for the fractured opposition, except for a statement by an international observer group that effectively agreed with them that elections in Mr. Orban’s country have become unfair. The country’s major TV outlets, virtually all of which are owned by Mr. Orban’s government or his allies, covered the prime minister “in almost exclusively positive terms,” the observers said. For three years, Mr. Orban has castigated the bloc and its 2015 plan to resettle 1,294 refugees from Greece and Italy in Hungary, comparing it to the Soviet Union, which once dominated the country. EU officials are looking at ways to link aid to countries that respect the rule of law, a proposal understood to target Poland and Hungary, two countries seen by the EU as increasingly autocratic. But Mr. Orban has powerful supporters within Mr. Juncker’s own European People’s Party, an umbrella organization of center-right parties including German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. Ultimately, 51% of voters in the national election split their ballots between nearly two dozen parties—ranging from socialists to nationalists to liberals—that agreed on little besides opposition to Mr. Orban. Mr. Orban successfully tagged it as a liberal, pro-immigrant party funded by Mr. Soros.

Is hosting the World Cup a “propaganda victory” for Vladimir Putin? Happily for our purposes – I am using only World Cups and European Championships, because I have more polling information and more democracies to choose from – the most recent two contests occurred in democracies and relatively close to an election. France hosted the 2016 European Championship, reaching the final before losing to Portugal, a successful tournament by anyone’s standards. The winners, Portugal, had had an election the year before. The most recent World Cup was hosted in Brazil, the summer before their presidential election. Maddeningly, winners Germany had just had an election a year before, but Angela Merkel does appear to have had a small bounce in the polls in the immediate aftermath, but it is hard to be sure: her ruling CDU/CSU went from polling around 40 per cent to around 44 percent, so barely outside the margin of error. Frustratingly, Poland had had elections a year prior, so our information is less useful, but Ukraine, like Brazil, had an election the following autumn, where the incumbent government was re-elected. Victory in the Euros actually coincided with a fall in the polls for Spain’s ruling People’s Party. But the hosting nations had no political boost and the governing parties in Austria both slumped to their worst-ever performances in the snap elections that followed the autumn after the contest. So the recent evidence, such as it is, is clear: there is no political dividend for Vladimir Putin to be had in Russia hosting the World Cup.