Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel is “watching with great concern” the influence of tech billionaires such as Elon Musk on US President-elect Donald Trump.
He gave the news magazine Der Spiegel today ahead of the publication of his memoirs in his interview Merkel said that politics is ultimately about balancing the interests of ordinary and powerful citizens. “If that decision-making is too heavily influenced either by corporations, or by the power of capital, or by technological capabilities, it’s an unprecedented challenge for all of us,” he said, citing Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who Trump has asked to be the example. co-head of the new Ministry of Government Efficiency, which, according to the future president, will operate outside the framework of the government.
“A person like Musk owns 60% of the satellites in space, and that is a huge concern for us in addition to the political issues,” Merkel said. SpaceX operates the Starlink satellite internet provider, which has more than 6,000 satellites in space, and which is used by ordinary people, corporations and government agencies alike. Merkel told Spiegel that Trump’s re-victory filled her with sadness someone in politics does not allow win-win situations, but always recognizes only winners and losers, then it is a very difficult task for multilateralism,” he said.
Merkel’s more than 700-page memoir – titled: Freedom: Memories 1954-2021 – His book, written before Trump’s re-election, will be published in more than 30 countries on November 26. In her book – which she will present in the United States in December at a joint event with former US President Barack Obama – Merkel describes her relations with Trump and other world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. The book comes at a time when Germany is under pressure to protect its heritage in light of its current economic and political difficulties and mounting international crises.
Angela Merkel’s first mistake with Donald Trump, she writes in her long-awaited memoirs, was to treat him as if he was “completely normal”, but she soon learned about his emotional nature and his weakness for authoritarians and tyrants. She initially misunderstood Trump during their first meeting in the Oval Office in 2017, where he tried to humiliate her by refusing to shake her hand in front of the cameras. “Instead of stoically putting up with it, I whispered to him that we should hold hands,” she writes. “As soon as the words left my mouth, I shook my head to myself. How could I forget that Trump knew exactly what he was doing. With his behavior, he wanted to give people a topic to talk about, and I behaved as if I was talking to a completely normal person”.
He has been working on the book since Merkel’s departure in 2021. It talks about her upbringing in communist East Germany, her unlikely rise within the center-right Christian Democratic Union and her 16 years in power, during which she became known as the queen of Europe and the “leader of the free world” – a label once reserved exclusively for American presidents. Now unbound by diplomatic niceties, Merkel describes Trump as driven by grievances and needs, as opposed to his “matter-of-fact” approach. “It seemed like his main goal was to make his interlocutor feel guilty. At the same time, I got the impression that he also wanted his interlocutor to like him.” Instead of trying to build bridges with traditional allies, “Trump was visibly impressed the Russian president,” writes Merkel, noting that “politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits held him in their grip.”
On the flight home after their first meeting, Merkel concluded that Trump “looked at everything like the real estate developer he was before he entered politics. For him, every country was a rival in which the success of one meant the failure of the other. He didn’t think that prosperity can be increased for everyone”. The controversial relationship with Merkel also hurts Trump, who even spoke about it during a campaign tour this year. “The Germans didn’t like me because I said it has to be paid,” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania, apparently referring to defense spending within NATO. “I said to Angela: Angela, you didn’t pay”.
In her self-confessed belated endorsement, written ahead of this month’s US election, Merkel says: “I wish with all my heart that Kamala Harris defeats her rival and becomes president.” But history had other plans for Vladimir Putin, another figure who is still shaping the world in his absence. Although Merkel – who speaks fluent Russian – found him manipulative and vindictive, she admits the Russian president had some valid points in his infamous anti-Western speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. “There were points that I didn’t think were completely absurd. As we know, there was never any evidence that there were chemical weapons in Iraq,” he writes, referring to the American rationale for overthrowing the regime there.
Source: sg.hu
