GERMANY/NATO/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared to hit back at US President Donald Trump’s claim that ‘Germany is a captive of Russia’ by drawing on her own upbringing in Soviet-controlled East Germany. ‘I wanted to say that, because of current events, I have witnessed this myself, that a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union. And I am very happy that we are today unified in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany,’ she said in an arrival statement at the NATO Summit Wednesday [7-11-18], according to an English translation of her remarks…Merkel, who was born in Hamburg in 1954, has spoken on numerous occasions about her upbringing under Soviet occupation…Although she did not mention the US President by name in her NATO statement, Merkel’s comments seemed to be a direct repudiation of Trump’s earlier remarks, in which he maligned Germany for getting natural gas from Russia.”
-Jennifer Hansler, “Merkel responds to Trump: ‘I have witnessed’ Germany under Soviet control,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, July 11, 2018 4:40 pm