German Chancellor Angela Merkel told former President Barack Obama that she felt obligated to run for a fourth term after the election of President Trump in 2016, according to a new book set to be published next week.
Former deputy national security adviser under Obama, Ben Rhodes, said in his yet-to-be-released book “The World as It Is” that Obama said Merkel was “all alone” after the 2016 elections, according to a report from the New York Times on excerpts from the book.
Merkel felt the obligation to run again because she needed to defend the liberal international order, the book said. Rhodes recalled how Obama questioned if he was wrong about the success he felt he had created in globalization during his administration.
“Maybe we pushed too far,” Obama said, according to Rhodes. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.”
