Trump called May and Merkel 'losers' after their political setbacks, ex-officials say

Donald Trump described Theresa May and Angela Merkel as “losers” after they suffered political setbacks, and was repeatedly rude to them, without any of the deference he showed to authoritarian rulers, according to former officials and diplomats.

Those who have witnessed the president’s phone calls and meetings with foreign leaders said he had a weakness for monarchs and leaders with absolute power, because that is how he would ideally like to govern. He could be contemptuous of democratic allies, on the other hand, if they had done poorly in elections or opinion polls, and generally viewed them as supplicants asking for personal favours. “Catch Trump at the wrong moment, when he has a fresh grievance (ie most days) and he can be pretty charmless,” a former European official said.

Trump’s attitude towards May changed after the British prime minister miscalculated her support and called a snap election in June 2017, in which she lost her parliamentary majority. He repeatedly told aides that Merkel had been the strongest leader in Europe until she had allowed more than a million Syrian refugees to settle in Germany, which temporarily affected her popularity.

“I heard myself Trump saying they were ‘losers’,” a former European diplomat said.

A former US official said: “With May, he was perfectly normal with her until she blew it with that election – and then he saw her as a dead woman walking.”

However, the former official denied a CNN report this week that Trump had told Merkel directly that she was “stupid” and told May she was “weak and lacked courage”.

“I’ve never heard him say that on the phone,” the former official said, describing Trump’s style with May, Merkel and also the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as “rude and brusque” but stopping short of being “abusive”.

“He can be rude when he thinks that he can get away with it, with no consequences to it,” the ex-official said. “When he senses the person wants something in the phone call, there is a vulnerability. Macron was always calling asking for something.”

Trump was also irritated when May asked for a strong US response against Moscow for the poisoning of the former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, using the nerve agent novichok, in Salisbury, England, in March 2018. A British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died in July of that year after coming in contact with novichok.

“He was angry about Skripal,” a former US official recalled. “It was like – why is everybody always asking me – me personally – to do things? Why isn’t anyone else doing something?”

The Trump administration did respond robustly to the Skripal attack, expelling 60 Russian diplomats deemed to be intelligence officers. But it was later reported that the president complained he had been misled by his own officials and had not intended such a severe response.

Trump’s aggressive phone manner with democratic allies is in marked contrast to his consistently deferential approach to authoritarian rulers. In the view of one former Trump aide, China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had something to offer Trump. He thought his stature was enhanced by being seen as getting along with them.

“It’s not that it’s like a fascination with Putin and Russia per se. It’s the image of the person itself, and what they stand for,” the former aide said. “He wants to be seen as somebody who can completely have his own way. And he wants to be seen in the company of people who he sees that reflected in. People with ultimate authority, swagger.”

“It was the same with MBS [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman],” the former official added. “And he’s super deferential to the Queen – unbelievably deferential and obsequious to the Queen.”

One significant exception to the general rule is Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israel’s democratically elected prime minister who frequently sought support from Trump, but succeeded in doing so without enraging him.

“It’s because of Bibi’s style,” the former official said. “Bibi – and Erdoğan is the same way, have a way of asking for things. It makes him seem powerful because ‘only you, the great master, can do this’.”