" Merkel knows how bad Trump is. She’s been briefed [by her agencies].” The ex-director said that as someone who grew up in communist East Germany, Merkel—the daughter of a pastor, a onetime research scientist, and a fluent Russian speaker who visited Soviet Moscow—had little tolerance for lying. “She lived through that. She’s almost Calvinist,” the former official said. "

― Luke Harding , Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win