President Trump's tense relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel hasn't gotten any better after a two-day Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, where Trump was isolated on the other leaders' climate resolution.

“I can't exactly judge how things will be tomorrow or the day after,” Merkel said at a news conference after the summit finished Saturday.

Trump's private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin stole the show at the G-20. But it was Merkel who was in the hot seat as she shepherded the 19 other leaders through tricky negotiations and brushed aside speculation that Trump would upend the rest of the group's common ground on issues ranging from economic policy to development and trade.

Violent protests outside the summit increased pressure on Merkel. She is in the middle of an election campaign and despite her comfortable lead in polls, Martin Schulz, the Social Democratic candidate who is challenging her, recently amped up his criticism of her for not standing up to Trump.

Her strained relationship with Trump was on display during the summit on her home turf — her last big international meeting before the September election. She fielded journalists' questions about her relationship with Trump and his daughter Ivanka's participation at a G-20 event on women's entrepreneurship — Ivanka was booed when she spoke at an event in Berlin this spring.

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http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-merkel-trump-relationship-2017...

ZINGST, Germany – German Chancellor Angela Merkel told voters on Saturday that Britain’s decision to leave the European Union and France’s election of President Emmanuel Macron had changed her view on the bloc, adding it was worth fighting for a stronger Europe.

Merkel’s comments, made in a speech in the Baltic Sea resort town of Zingst two months before a federal election, underline her personal determination to deepen European integration if she is re-elected for a fourth term.

Calling European Union membership one of Germany’s biggest strengths, Merkel said last year’s Brexit decision and elections in France and the Netherlands, in which pro-European parties defeated populist candidates, had changed her perspective.

“For many people, including myself, something changed when we saw the Britons want to leave, when we were worried about the outcome of the elections in France and the Netherlands,” Merkel told voters, some of whom wore straw hats with black-red-and-gold hatbands, the colors of the German flag.

The center-right chancellor admitted that the EU was far from perfect and that Brussels sometimes was too bureaucratic.

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http://nypost.com/2017/07/15/merkel-says-brexit-macrons-election-changed...

Merkel doesn't mention Donald Trump by name, but it is clear to everyone who she's referring to when she says: "We can see that thinking in terms of national spheres of influence is on the rise and that principles of international law or human rights are also being challenged as a result." 

Superhuman Hopes

The German chancellor against the forces of darkness -- that is the message of the evening. And because there is such widespread agreement in the auditorium about the gravity of the global situation, and about the good fortune that at least the chancellor is trying to stop the Apocolypse, Merkel decides to deviate from her otherwise unrelenting schedule and promises to stay for another quarter of an hour at the subsequent reception. 

A crowd quickly forms around the woman upon whom superhuman hopes are resting. Amanpour also wants a selfie with Merkel, which she then shares with her almost 3 million followers on Twitter. The CNN anchor later gives an interview to the German news channel n-tv. When the reporter notes that some voters in Germany are critical of the chancellor, Amanpour rebukes him: "Don't disparage Angela Merkel, she's one of the few who's still standing. You're lucky to have her."

Merkel has now spent 13.5 years governing the country. And if she completes her current term, she will have served as long as Helmut Kohl, who ultimately came to be known as the "eternal chancellor." In Kohl's case, it was clear that he would have German reunification and the euro as his legacy -- that was already abundently clear when, surrounded by his last group of loyal supporters, he admitted his election defeat in the West German capital of Bonn in 1998.

But things are murkier for Merkel because the legacy of her era is much harder to grasp than that of her predecessors. Does she even have one? Merkel has always asserted that she doesn't spend much time worrying about such trifles. But she has found her own way of working on her place in history. She rejects it as "grotesque" and "absurd" when a newspaper claims she's the leader of the free world. And yet the major issue in this late stage of her political career is, in fact, the defense of the liberal world order. Issues don't get much bigger than that. It is something of a paradox, and one from which she profits the most.

Like every long-serving chancellor, Merkel tries to escape the petty melancholia of domestic politics. In that sense, she's no different from Konrad Adenauer and Kohl. What does distinguish her from her predecessors, though, is a deep pessimism, the fear that the world is sliding into the abyss. During her term in office, Turkey transformed from a hopeful democracy into an autocratic regime. The Saudi crown prince turned out to be a cruel despot rather than the young reformer many initially hoped he might be. Putin sought to make his delusions of grandeur reality. And then there's Trump, whose most recent project is to attempt regime change in Iran, an experiment that already failed terribly one time before. In Merkel's view, the fuse has already been lit.

Read more:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dim-view-of-the-world-will-...

Read from top.

Note: Der Spiegel does not like Putin (Der Spiegel hates Putin). Merkel is more ambivalent about him. Putin has no delusion of grandeur, but he has been elected to protect Russia from the gangsters of the West. 

Title at top: losing hope for the world...

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http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33207