Memoir of former German chancellor recalls US president’s soft spot for tyrants and apparent fascination with Putin

Angela Merkel’s first mistake with Donald Trump, she says in her keenly awaited new memoir, was treating him as if he were “completely normal”, but she quickly learned of his “emotional” nature and soft spot for authoritarians and tyrants.

In extracts from her more than 700-page tome, Freedom, published in the German weekly Die Zeit, the former German chancellor says she initially misread her encounter with a tetchy Trump during their first meeting in 2017 in the Oval Office, where he attempted to humiliate her by refusing to shake her hand before the cameras.