No bromance: Merkel gets much smaller platform in US

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is heading to Washington with the same message French President Emmanuel Macron delivered only days earlier: that America and Europe need to bury the hatchet on key issues, from global trade to international security.

Yet despite Macron’s and Merkel’s efforts to portray a united European front, the optics of their visits couldn’t be more different.

While US President Donald Trump received Macron and his wife for a glitzy three-day state visit this week, Merkel gets a 20-minute private chat Friday in the Oval Office followed by a working lunch.

And unlike the bonhomie on display during Macron visit, past encounters suggest Merkel and Trump won’t be putting on a show of mutual affection for the White House cameras.

That should be fine with Merkel, who has little to gain back home by being overly friendly with Trump, according to German political analyst Jan Techau.

“For Merkel, it’s quite important domestically not to be seen to be getting too close to Trump,” said Techau, a senior fellow at think tank The German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Anti-American sentiment has been growing again in Germany since Trump’s election, with mainstream media regularly portraying the U.S. president as a threat to the world. But Merkel, who responded to Trump’s “America First” message by saying that “we in Europe have to take our fate into our own hands,” knows she needs to find a way to win over the US President or risk a further decline in relations between Berlin and Washington, said Techau.