Ursula von der Leyen told to leave room during multilateral talks at Trump's Washington summit – not a "leader" nor an "elected head of state" (or not? see UPDATE)

Ursula von der Leyen at the Washington summit on Monday, barely even in the photograph.

The sharp-eyed reporters at Apollo News caught this nugget in the flood of post-summit media coverage yesterday:

Bundestag Vice President Omid Nouripour said on Tuesday on the n-tv programme “Frühstart” that Ursula von der Leyen was made to leave the room during Trump’s meeting with European leaders in Washington. “In the middle of yesterday's meeting … Ms. von der Leyen had to leave because the Americans said: ‘We only want to talk to leaders.’”

According to Nouripour, the EU Commission President was kicked out of the room because the American politicians do not regard her as an elected head of a state. Nouripour immediately disputed this American viewpoint: “Ms. von der Leyen represents over 400 million people. Yesterday, she was also the voice of the states that were not present, which are highly relevant to the dispute with Ukraine, such as Poland, the Baltic states and the Czech Republic.”

He said that meetings with Trump were too much about not upsetting him instead of representing “one’s own national and European interests.” Europe must remain at America’s side, he said, but it must also become more independent so that it can support Ukraine on its own.

Von der Leyen represents “over 400 million people” in the same way that rude clerks at the Registry of Motor Vehicles represent local drivers.

To begin with, there is no singular European people or unified European national interest on behalf of which von der Leyen could ever speak. She has no meaningful budget, she commands no army and she has no political legitimacy. Von der Leyen last won an election in 2003 for the state parliament of Niedersachsen; her entire career since then has been a product of back room deals, internal party pecking orders and Angela Merkel’s patronage. The latter brought her to prominence with a series of cabinet posts, culminating in her six-year term as Minister of Defence, where she was widely accused of mismanagement and incompetence. Back in 2019, only a third of Germans thought Merkel’s “weakest minister” was fit to preside over the EU Commission, a position she owes largely to Emmanuel Macron’s political triangulations.

The Americans were entirely right to tell her to get out, and they should do this more often.

UPDATE: Omid Nouripour has now issued a quiet denial on X:

Important clarification. In my initial comment, I was relying on incorrect reports. It is now clear that this is not true. Von der Leyen was there the whole time – and so were all EU member states that were not represented in Washington. Good and right.

Apollo News have heavily revised the article I link above. There were no reports (in the public record, anyway) about von der Leyen being told to leave the room before Nouripour’s interview. The French journalist Patricia Cerinsek writes at L’Eclaireur that “sources in Washington” confirmed to her the veracity of this story.