Merz survives Trump test, despite Ukraine differences

WASHINGTON: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz came through his Oval Office encounter with Donald Trump relatively unscathed on Thursday -- despite differences over Ukraine as the US president said it might be better to let Moscow and Kyiv fight it out like children.

A month into his job, Merz unleashed a charm offensive on the 78-year-old Trump, presenting him with a framed copy of the birth certificate of his grandfather Frederick, who was born in Germany in 1869. Merz also hailed Trump as being the “key person in the world” when it came to ending the Ukraine war, saying the US leader could “really do that now by putting pressure on Russia.”

It was a backhanded way of urging Trump to overcome his aversion to putting sanctions on Russia over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as the more than three-year-old war grinds on.

The polite meeting showed that the conservative German leader had done his homework as he sought to avoid ambushes like those that Trump unleashed on Ukraine´s President Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa´s president. But they did not see eye to eye on everything.

Trump -- who spoke to Russian leader Vladimir Putin a day earlier -- said it might be better to let the two sides fight it out, comparing the war that has left thousands dead and swathes of Ukraine in ruins to a children´s brawl.

“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy. They hate each other, and they´re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart,” Trump told reporters.

“Sometimes you´re better off letting them fight for a while.” Trump said however that he had urged Putin not to retaliate after Ukraine launched daring drone attacks on its airbases, destroying several nuclear capable bombers. “I said ´don´t do it,´” Trump told reporters, adding that Putin had told him he had no choice but to respond and it was “not going to be pretty.”

Trump did make a series of off-color references to the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II -- still a deeply sensitive subject in modern-day Germany. Praising Merz for Germany raising its defence spending in line with his demands for Nato members to cough up, Trump said he was not sure World War II US general Douglas MacArthur would have agreed.

Then, referring to the upcoming 80th anniversary of the allied D-Day landings that led to the end of the war, Trump said: “That was not a pleasant day for you?” Merz, 69, calmly replied: “This was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship. We know what we owe you.” Merz avoided other possible pitfalls as Trump spent much of his time on a lengthy discourse against his billionaire former advisor Elon Musk.