chancellor for allowing refugees from war-torn regions into Germany, blaming her for what Trump described as the ruin of her country and using her policy as a jumping off point for his own anti-refugee proposals.
Here is a sampling of what candidate Trump had to say about Merkel on the campaign trail:
- At a November 2015 rally in Knoxville, Tennessee, Trump said that what Merkel did to Germany was "a disgrace." Trump admitted that he used to be a "fan of Merkel," but changed his mind after her decision to allow refugees into Germany.
- When Merkel beat Trump out for TIME Magazine's Person of the Year 2015, Trump took to Twitter to vent his frustration:
- Trump continued the Person of the Year complaint at a campaign rally weeks later in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "They gave it to a woman who's not done the right thing in Germany," Trump said in December 2015 before leveling a prophecy that would be true a year later. "Nice woman, I like her, I like her. I better like her, I may have to deal with her. Look, Putin likes me, I want her to like me too."
- While campaigning ahead of the Iowa caucus, Trump predicted to a crowd in Cedar Falls that "the German people are going to end up overthrowing this woman. I don't know what the hell she's thinking."
- "Germany's being destroyed," Trump declared in a March 2016 interview with the New York Times. "I have friends, I just left people from Germany and they don't even want to go back. Germany's being destroyed by Merkel's naïveté or worse. But Germany is a whole different place and you're going to have a problem in Germany."
- Trump again reiterated his reversal on Merkel to NBC News' Katy Tur in June 2016. Asked about his less-than-complimentary statements about Merkel, Trump responded: "I gave her great compliments until she allowed the refugees to come into Germany, and Germany ... has tremendous problems right now."
- In the heat of the general election, Trump tied his opponent to the German chancellor. "[Hillary Clinton] is running to be America's Angela Merkel," Trump's scripted attack read at a September rally in North Carolina.
- Trump called Merkel his favorite world leader, confusing many who had heard him lampoon the German chancellor for months prior: "Well I think Merkel is a really great world leader but I was very disappointed that, when she, this move with the whole thing on immigration. I think it's a big problem and really, you know, to look at what she's done in the last year and a half. I was always a Merkel person. I thought, really fantastic, but I think she made a very tragic mistake a year and a half ago."
- Days before his inauguration, Trump told the Times of London he believed Merkel's decision to allow more than 1 million migrants into Germany a "catastrophic mistake."
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