He's not though. He was probably given some version of that statement as part of a briefing, but more importantly his businesses and campaign finance were incredibly entangled with Russian money and oligarchs at pretty much every level[1,2], not to mention his bizarre interactions with Putin.
This was his version of simply yelling the same insult back at people he didn't like: and he really didn't like Merkel (or any European leader) because unlike the despots and dictators they wouldn't just suck up to him (notably Shinzo Abe figured him out immediately and went all in on the obvious play for favor[3])
This was his version of simply yelling the same insult back at people he didn't like: and he really didn't like Merkel (or any European leader) because unlike the despots and dictators they wouldn't just suck up to him (notably Shinzo Abe figured him out immediately and went all in on the obvious play for favor[3])
[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/18/japans-abe-nominated-trump-f...