Ex-president says he warned Angela Merkel that Berlin’s dependence on Russian energy could lead to a “surrender”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a Save America Rally on September 17, 2022, Youngstown, Ohio, US © AFP / Jeff Swensen/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/Getty Images via AFP
Germany could soon cease to exist as a country amid the escalating energy crisis, former US president Donald Trump has suggested.
During a rally in Youngstown, Ohio on Saturday, Trump tore into his successor in the White House, taking aim at Biden’s energy policy and the so-called Green New Deal in particular. The Republican firebrand claimed that, although under his rule the US had become independent in terms of energy and on track to become “totally dominant in energy, bigger than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined,” Joe Biden has since reduced the US to “begging for energy.”
Trump then went on to cite Germany’s sorry state of affairs in this area. According to the ex-president, he warned then-Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was supposed to pump Russian gas to Germany, would make Berlin even more dependent on Russian energy exports.
Trump said he had sent the “white flag of surrender” to Angela Merkel when she refused to ditch the project.
“If you are getting 72% of your energy from Russia, here’s the white flag, because you will be surrendering very quickly,” the former US head of state recounted his own warning to Merkel.
He proceeded to cite the “bad things” which have happened between Berlin and Moscow in the past as proof that Germany should not have relied so heavily on Russia.
The former US president concluded by saying that “Germany now is going back to the old-fashioned stuff, including coal,” despite its previous pledges to go green.
“But they have no choice, they won’t have a country, they won’t have a country left,” Trump warned cryptically, before returning to the topic of domestic politics again.
Gas prices in Europe soared dramatically soon after Russia launched its military offensive against Ukraine in late February, and have remained consistently higher than last year’s ever since.
With both the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines now inoperative, either due to Berlin’s own or to Moscow’s decision, the German government has put in place emergency measures to stock up on gas.
Multiple senior officials in Germany have warned that the coming winter is likely to be tough.
