On Monday on CNN’s “News Central,” former German Chancellor Angela Merkel told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that President-elect Donald Trump was fascinated by dictators’ power.
Amanpour asked, “I remember very distinctly when Donald Trump was first elected. You did one– You were the only one to actually welcome his election conditionally. In other words, based on the respect and the adherence to mutual values, democracy, freedom, diversity, rule of law, human rights, etc. And I just wonder whether you thought he did act in that way, and especially because you said he was clearly fascinated by the Russian president. ‘In the years that followed, I received the distinct impression that he was captivated by politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits.’ How did that manifest itself to you?”
Merkel said, “Well, in the way that he spoke about Putin, the way that he spoke about the North Korean president, obviously, apart from critical remarks he made, there was always a kind of fascination at the sheer power of what these people could do. So my impression always was that he dreamt of actually overriding maybe all those parliamentary bodies that he felt were, in a way, an encumbrance upon him and that he wanted to decide matters on his own. And in a democracy, well, you cannot reconcile that with democratic values.”
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