After Merkel left the White House, Trump slams Germany as NATO-owing country on Twitter

…vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2017

The president wrote that he’d had a “GREAT meeting with” Merkel, brushing off what he termed “fake” reports suggesting otherwise.

There was no immediate response to Trump’s comments from German officials.

Trump’s messages came after Merkel, at a joint White House press conference, appeared to tweak the president about his criticisms of her and others on social media and elsewhere, including an interview in January calling Germany’s open-border refugee policy a “catastrophic mistake.”

“In the period leading up to this visit, I’ve always said it’s much, much better to talk to one another and not about one another, and I think our conversation proved this,” the German leader said through a translator.

Trump on Friday said he had “reiterated to Chancellor Merkel my strong support for NATO, as well as the need for our NATO allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defense.” He said “many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the United States.”