Days after Donald Trump’s first presidential visit to the Middle East and Europe, which he described as a “great success for America” with “big results,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Germany and the rest of the European Union can no longer “completely depend” on on the U.S. and the U.K.
Brexit and the American presidential election have changed things for Germany, Merkel said. “The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out,” Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich. “I’ve experienced that in the last few days.”
“We must really take our destiny into our own hands,” she continued. Naturally, Merkel said, they would remain friends with America, Great Britain, and Russia, but “we must fight for our own future and our fate ourselves as Europeans.”
Merkel’s comments are a rebuke of the narrative that Trump’s foreign trip was a success merely because the president avoided making too many show-stopping gaffes, and suggest that other nations are less likely to lower their expectations of and standards for U.S. presidential behavior.
Her statements follow Trump mentioning that he’d need some time to decide if America would continue backing the 2015 Paris Agreement on mitigating greenhouse gases emissions. Trump tweeted on Saturday that he would “make a decision” about the agreement next week.
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“The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying,” Merkel told reporters at the time. G7 leaders issued a statement on Trump’s indecision that read:
