At the Nevada Commit to Caucus Rally yesterday, former president Donald Trump spoke about Ukraine. He said: “We’re in for $200 billion plus, and the European nations are in for $20 billion and it’s more important for them.”
Trump added: “It’s like what I did with NATO, I said ‘we’re spending, we’re paying for NATO and we don’t get so much out of it.'” Trump added: “And you know I hate to tell you this about NATO, if we ever needed their help let’s say we were attacked, I don’t believe they’d be there.”
Foreign policy experts are criticizing Trump for his remarks, including conservative Jonah Greenberg, former editor of National Review, who wrote: “Grotesque and idiotic and a gift to our enemies. Even if what he was saying was true, by ‘realist’ rules it still hurts America to talk this way without getting anything for it. Not clever foreign policy, it’s abject ignorance masquerading as seriousness.”
NATO came to our rescue after 9-11. You fool. You fool. https://t.co/vf4g3McXMJ
— Gen Michael Hayden (@GenMhayden) January 28, 2024
Retired U.S. Air Force General Michael Hayden, who was Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), responded to Trump: “NATO came to our rescue after 9-11. You fool. You fool.”
After the 9/11 attacks on the United States, NATO allies voted unanimously the next day to invoke Article 5, the commitment of NATO members to come to the defense of any member under attack.
Seventeen years ago, our #NATO allies invoked Article 5 of the Washington Treaty to defend us after the 9/11 attacks. They are still with us in Afghanistan today. As U.S. Ambassador to NATO that day, I felt the power of our alliance and will be forever grateful.
— Nicholas Burns (@RNicholasBurns) September 11, 2018
R. Nicholas Burns, who was serving as the US ambassador to NATO in 2001, testified in 2018 to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Assessing the Value of the NATO Alliance: “The allies stood up to defend us. They decided that Osama bin Laden’s attack on the US was an attack on them as well. All of them deployed forces to Afghanistan with us. They remain with us there today seventeen years later. This is the true meaning of NATO for America.”
