President of European Commission: We Had a ‘Very Frankly Constructed Meeting’ With TrumpWashington Free Beacon, May 26, 2017, Cameron Cawthorne
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, appeared to confirm Friday that President Donald Trump had complained privately about Germany, but he pushed back against the notion that Trump was aggressive in his criticism.
Juncker instead described a "very frankly constructed meeting" with Trump in Brussels and said that it was not "aggressive" like news outlets had reported, according to Politico.
Juncker's intervention, at a press conference ahead of Friday's meeting of G7 leaders in Taormina, Sicily, came after reports in the German press, sourced to someone in the room, claimed that Trump had complained about the "terrible" trade deficit between the U.S. and Germany.
At the press conference Friday, European Council President Donald Tusk refused to comment and hit out at the leaks. "I don't want to be a part of this culture of permanent leaks. Today's diplomacy needs professional plumbers, not indiscreet diplomats," he said.
Juncker, however, was less reticent.
"I don't want to comment but I have to comment," he said, drawing laughter. "We had a meeting with President Trump, which was a very frankly constructed meeting."
"It's not true that the president took an aggressive approach when it came to the German trade surplus," he continued. "This is a real translation [issue]. If someone is saying the Germans are bad that doesn't mean this can be translated literally. He was not aggressive at all."
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