Let history note that Trump said NATO was obsolete and spent his entire term denigrating it and threatening to pull the United States out of the alliance. He pulled 12,000 troops out of Europe and planned to make a total withdrawal from Germany right after the election. (And there is no such thing as NATO “dues” which he never understood and never will.)
This excerpt from Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker’s book, “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year” :
In fact, Trump had privately indicated that he would seek to withdraw from NATO and to blow up the U.S. alliance with South Korea, should he win reelection. When those alliances had come up in meetings with Esper and other top aides, some advisers warned Trump that shredding them before the election would be politically dangerous.
“Yeah, the second term,” Trump had said. “We’ll do it in the second term.”
Here’s a flashback, via the NYT:
WASHINGTON — There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.
Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.
Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.
Last night this man appeared on Fox News:
That man was installed at the Pentagon after Trump lost the election. He was the one pushing for the withdrawal of 30,000 troops.
Trump nominated him to be the Ambassador of Germany. Thankfully, the nomination was held up in the Senate. Even some Republicans were appalled.