Foreigners often get Mrs Merkel all wrong. She is not the queen of Europe, nor has she any desire to be it. She is a domestic leader and politician whose mounting international stature is always a function of her ability to serve the interests and predilections of German voters. It is predominantly because Germans, for deep historical and cultural reasons, feel so “European” that that she talks and acts in a “European” way. Perhaps all the more for this, Mrs Merkel’s comments today illustrate how much Trumpandbrexit has hurt America and Britain in the past months. They have made it not just possible but also electorally beneficial for a friendly leader of a crucial partner to bash them in public. And more than that: to do it with sincerity.
). Go to our I don’t know where MK Bhadrakumar gets his stats – possibly Russia Today: https://www.rt.com/news/germany-lose-trust-us-snowden-431/ – although RT gives the date as 2014. Die Welt, just to provide one quick example, reports a decline of 37% on the same question from November 2016 to the Feburary, on 70% distrust vs 22% trust. Certainly there was decline from Obama’s first year over the course of his term, with some notorious incidents – especially around the Snowden affair – punctuating and deepening it. If you really want to examine German public opinion,
https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article161766668/Deutsche-verlieren-wegen-Trump-Vertrauen-in-die-USA.html (The decline numbers are the ones in parentheses after each country name.)
I’ll be posting a quick rundown on the recent history of that poll.
From M.K. Bhadrakumar’s take on Hausfrau Merkel’s remarks: