Donald Trump says D-Day 'wasn't a pleasant day for Germany' during meeting with Fredrich Merz

LAST UPDATE | 21 hrs ago

DONALD TRUMP HAS said D-Day, when allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944 during WWII and marked the beginning of the end of the Nazi regime, “was not a pleasant day” for Germany.

He made the remark during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Washington DC, where the pair discussed the war in Ukraine, defence spending and US-Germany relations.

As has become the norm during the Oval Office meetings, Trump took questions from the press for half an hour on a variety of domestic topics, including his recently imposed travel bans and the public row between him and billionaire Elon Musk.

Speaking about the historic relationship between the US and Germany, Merz noted that tomorrow is the 81st anniversary of D-Day, when allied forced started the process of toppling the Nazi regime in Europe.

“That was not a pleasant day for you,” Trump said, laughing. “This was not a great day.”

Merz said: “No, that wasn’t a pleasant — well, in the long run, Mr President, it was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship. And we owe [the US].”

“And this is what I’m saying,” Merz added. “America is, again, in a very strong position to end [the war in Ukraine]. So lets talk about what we can do jointly and do what we can. We gave support to Ukraine, and we are looking for more pressure on Russia.”

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The two men have different approaches to the war in Ukraine, with Trump moving away from supporting its efforts to defend against the full-scale Russian invasion and Germany recently expanding its supply of weaponry to Kyiv. 

Trump yesterday spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, when the leader told the US president that he was planning his response to a major Ukrainian attack on his country’s bombing infrastructure.

Asked about the remark today, Trump said: “[Ukraine] attacked pretty harshly. Deep into Russia. [Putin] actually told me: ‘We have no choice but to attack’.”

“It’s probably not going to be pretty,” the US president said. “I don’t like it. I said ‘Don’t do it, you shouldn’t do it. You should stop it’. But, again, there’s a lot of hatred.”

Responding to another journalist, Merz said: “We are all looking for ways to stop [the war] very soon. I told the President before we came in that he is the key person involved, who can really do this now by putting pressure on Russia.”

He added: “We have the duty to do something on that now to stop it after three and a half years.”

With reporting from AFP and David MacRedmond

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