The US President boasted about pressuring European countries to boost military spending during his first presidential term in 2017 – claiming he raised ‘hundreds of billions of dollars’ for NATO
Donald Trump has claimed he was personally responsible for raising “hundreds of billions of dollars” for NATO in a bizarre rant.
The US President boasted about pressuring European countries to boost military spending during his first presidential term in 2017, and was praised by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte as the pair chatted during a meeting in the Oval Office yesterday. But Mr Trump has since claimed the military alliance “became much stronger because of my actions.”
Mr Rutte acknowledged Trump’s role in further escalating arms purchases since re-entering the White House in January this year. Talking about his demands to multiple NATO nations during his first term, Trump said he forced them to boost their defence spending to a minimum of 2% of GDP – a threshold he recently raised to 5%.
Trump said: “When I first went to @NATO.. I noticed that very few people were paying—and if they were, they weren’t paying their fair share… I was able to raise hundreds of billions of dollars… the money started pouring in and NATO became much stronger because of my actions.”
“I said, ‘No, I won’t protect if you’re not paying, if you’re delinquent or if the money isn’t paid, why would we do that?’ And as soon as I said that, I got a little hit from the press, because they said, ‘Oh, gee, that’s not very nice,’ but if you said the other nobody would have paid.”
He added that “NATO became strong from that standpoint. And now we have to use it wisely.” Trump met with Rutte on Thursday after calling on Europe to step up its defence resources and become more self-reliant.
Rutte welcomed Trump’s efforts to getting NATO allies to bolster defense spending and said he wanted to “commend” him over his attempts to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict, crediting Trump with “breaking a deadlock.”
Referring to NATO allies, Rutte told the president: “I think they want to work together with you in the run-up to the next summit to make sure that we will have a NATO, which is newly invigorated under your leadership.”
The Secretary-General played up the EU’s 800 billion euro plan to re-arm Europe in new defence spending by the 27-member bloc, and spoke of recent commitments from the UK and Germany to surge spending on security in those countries.
“What’s happened the last couple of weeks is really staggering”, Rutte said, acknowledging there is still more the alliance can do.