In the end, Angela Merkel couldn’t hide it. Seated next to Ivanka Trump at a White House meeting with business leaders on Friday, the German leader tilted her head in the first daughter’s direction as Ivanka spoke, a look of bewilderment tinged with disdain enveloping her face.
“Why are you here,” Merkel, never a good pretender, seemed to be thinking. [...]
The strategy appears to have succeeded. Trump praised Germany’s vocational training system as a model for the U.S. Though he stopped short of calling for even closer business ties, something German industry had been hoping for, Trump stressed the importance of strong trade between the two countries, as long as it was “fair.” [...]
Given Trump’s repeated and harsh insults of Merkel and her refugee stance during the campaign and afterwards, a warm embrace would have been both unrealistic and unconvincing. Most of this disharmony was non-verbal. Merkel shot Trump a skeptical glance during the press conference, for example, when he quipped that both of them appeared to have been wiretapped by the Obama administration. Trump either didn’t hear or ignored her when she suggested they shake hands in front of reporters (they had shaken hands at other times on Friday).
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