Secretary General confident that Trump administration will remain committed to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

But British lawmakers in particular were enthused by his views on Brexit.

Asked whom he trusted more, Merkel, a longtime U.S. ally, or Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump called it a draw – at least for now. “We count on the U.S.to stick to its worldwide obligations, including in the World Trade Organization”.

“We are going to move away from, I guess, a kind of Twitter diplomacy, and then into a reality”, said Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen, adding that reality could be “perhaps more hard than what is going on on Twitter”. But one of the Republican’s advisors attempted Tuesday to clarify Trump’s reasoning, Reuters reported Tuesday. “If Trump steps back then that will be an invitation for Putin to step forward”, anxious Igor Sutyagin, a Russian arms control expert now at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.

Ms Merkel is working to set a date this spring for a meeting with Mr Trump, who will be sworn in as U.S. president on Friday, German government sources told Reuters on Monday. It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. “I thought I’d do less [tweeting], but I’m covered so dishonestly by the press – so dishonestly – that I can put out Twitter – and it’s not 140, it’s now 280 – I can go bing bing bing. and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out – this morning on television, Fox – “Donald Trump, we have breaking news”.

Steinmeier’s premier, Chancellor Angela Merkel, came under particularly heavy criticism from the president-elect, who lambasted her “catastrophic mistake” to invite an unlimited number of migrants into Europe, despite the fact that “nobody even knows where they come from”.

Germany’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier, meanwhile, exploded that Trump’s statements had led to “astonishment and agitation” in Brussels.

After Mr Trump’s victory, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance had been a bedrock of transatlantic security for “almost 70 years” and was especially needed at a time of new challenges. Whereas on NATO he is clearly more ambivalent because he said that NATO is obsolete, but also that NATO is important for him.

Mr. Trump’s comments were welcomed by the Kremlin. “We have known what his position is for some time, and my position is also known”, she told reporters in Berlin.

She said: “I’m personally going to wait until the American president takes office, and then we will naturally work with him on all levels”.

“Let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russian Federation”, the president-elect said, suggesting in vague terms a deal in which nuclear arsenals would be reduced and sanctions against Moscow would be eased.

“If you take this path once, you will become the object of threats and intimidation”, said Roettgen, a leader in Merkel’s Christian Democrats. “She’s requesting a meeting and we’ll have a meeting right after I get into the White House and. we’re gonna get something done very quickly”. He added that, when it comes to the EU’s future, “I don’t think it matters much for the United States”.

After meetings at North Atlantic Treaty Organisation headquarters in Brussels on Monday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Trump’s criticism of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is “in contradiction” of Mattis’ vision of a strengthened alliance and US support of NATO’s Article 5, which considers an attack on any member as an attack against all.

“It’s a very bad thing, we had a chance to do something when we had the line in the sand and. nothing happened”.