Trump Bragged About Angela Merkel Comment That Compared His Ability to Draw a Crowd to Hitler, Per New Book

AP Photo/ Evan Vucci

Jonathan Karl, ABC’s chief Washington correspondent, has a new book about former President Donald Trump that reveals he bragged about a back-handed compliment from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Compliment” might be a generous word because Merkel was comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler.

Politico Playbook got an early look at Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, which comes out on November 14, and shared a tidbit from the book. Karl writes that Merkel, who was not a fan of Trump, had commented that the former president had an undeniable ability to draw a big crowd, not unlike a certain German dictator:

At least twice, Karl writes, Trump gloated to a prominent member of Congress that Merkel — who detested the 45th president privately and had trouble hiding her scorn publicly — told him she was “amazed” by the number of people who came to see him speak, and Trump said “she told me that there was only one other political leader who ever got crowds as big as mine.” The Trump-allied congressman knew who Merkel was comparing Trump to, but couldn’t tell if Trump, who took Merkel’s words as a compliment, himself understood.

Karl followed up in the book: “Which would be more unsettling: that he didn’t or that he did?”

There have been several instances of Trump either allegedly or blatantly praising the Nazi leader who was responsible for the murders of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, wrote in his book that during a 2018 trip to Europe to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I: “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things,” adding that under Hitler, the economy in Germany recovered after the war was over.

And in The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, Trump apparently complained about the military he commanded to Kelly: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?” When Kelly pressed him, “Which generals?” Trump responded: “The German generals in World War II.”

Kelly then reminded Trump that those generals “tried to kill Hitler three times.”

And let’s not forget the book of Hitler speeches that Trump allegedly kept “in a cabinet by his bed” for some light bedtime reading, a claim made by the late Ivana Trump.

So, Trump probably understood precisely what Merkel was talking about.