There was a story Friday morning about Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel that appeared in The New York Times — possibly critical of Merkel’s dealing with Russia in an almost-completed (94%) pipeline project.

But it occurred right off to me that she’s a woman, making her an automatic target of misogynist Donald. Merkel obtained a doctorate in quantum chemistry 34 years ago, has been in politics since 1989 and has been Chancellor of Germany for 15 years.

Donald has little use for science, a language in which he is not conversant. He has been described as a student who seldom attended college classes, paid others to do his work on the sly and was described by one professor as “the dumbest goddam student I ever had.” All these years later it’s not unusual for him to misspell a word when he finds it necessary to use several complete sentences in a Tweet. By late January he’ll have a grand total of four years’ political experience — and will have gone bankrupt five or six times over the years.

History originally spelled the name “Drumpf.” (The name of Trump’s German grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, was anglicized to Frederick Trump.)

Germany today is a bulwark of the European Union and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) — and Angela Merkel is the most powerful woman in the world. The U.S. has a leader of sorts who looks upon the acquisition of individual wealth as the only measure of success and importance, with an assumption that knowledge requires no effort — is a blatant misogynist and racist.

Donald’s costly military parade would be bright and shiny to an already over-extended Congress if he could only sell it — along with a wall along the border with Mexico. Pomp, military might and prominence to the name Trump give meaning to his life, it seems. Meanwhile he will flail away with attempts to dissemble a democratic society — including a free press.

Donald always has had an iffy, cool relationship with Germany’s Merkel. She became a “loser” in comments to various of his aides after she allowed more than a million Syrian refugees to settle in Germany (temporarily affecting her popularity). It was almost as if Donald were waiting for a Trumpian-based excuse to topple her as the strongest leader in Europe.

Of course, he’s always operated in a selfish divide-and-conquer manner that makes enemies out of should-be friends — when it comes to the United Nations, the European Union, NATO . . . however, I was flabbergasted after his first couple of years in political office that he figured he should receive a Nobel Peace Prize because Obama got one (and then spelled it in a subsequent Tweet as a “Noble” Prize).

Early last month Trump tweeted out a picture of himself standing in front of Mount Rushmore — an image that made him look as though he were the fifth presidential bust on the iconic monument. Moments later, he tweeted out a sort-of denial of a New York Times report that he had spoken with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem about the possibility of adding his own visage to those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. See https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/10/politics/donald-trump-mt-rushmore-kristi-noem/index.html

And once again I quote Nicholas Kristof’s late-August editorial column in The New York Times — being involved not with suspected Russian poisoning of a political Russian dissident in Germany, but with the runaway of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. At the time, about 40,000 new confirmed infections were being reported each day in the U.S., with a related death every 90 seconds. According to the University of Washington model, some 310,000 people in the U.S. will have died by Dec. 1 — more than the number of American combat deaths in World War II.

In his conclusion, Kristof wrote: “If Trump had managed the pandemic as well as Merkel, some 143,000* American lives could have been saved. [*now considerably more]

“Think about those people’s lives now that you’ve seen Trump try to rewrite history. The indisputable truth is this: The United States has 4% of the world’s population and 22% of the world’s confirmed coronavirus deaths.”

MISCELLANY — Sept. 5 headline: “Trump urges supporters to harass Steve Jobs’ widow because she owns the Atlantic.”

The story begins: “As the fallout continues from the Atlantic’s bombshell report that Donald Trump has repeatedly denigrated dead U.S. military personnel, Trump has found a new target for his attempts to make the story go away: The magazine’s owner, Laurene Powell Jobs. On Sunday, Trump called on his followers to warn her with phone calls and letters in retaliation for that story.” Her connection is remote; see https://www.dailydot.com/debug/trump-laurene-powell-jobs-tweet/