President Obama sat down Thursday with his close friend Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to try to make sense of the phenomenon vexing them both – the election of Donald Trump to serve as leader of the free world. At a news conference after their meeting, Obama expressed concern about whether Trump will stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin as tensions escalate between the U.S. and Russia. Moscow has said that the U.S. has failed to live up to its agreement to fight terrorism in Syria. The remarks by both the president and the leader of one of the U.S.' closest allies were remarkable for their public airing of concerns about the president-elect. Usually, diplomatic statements are full of cautious language — and neither Obama nor Merkel openly disparaged Trump — but their message was nonetheless unmistakable: Too much is at stake in geopolitics and the world order for Trump to drastically or suddenly alter U.S. foreign policy.

Source: Los Angeles Times November 17, 2016 18:18 UTC