He knew he was a snake before we let him in. Remember this?
July 20, 2016
CLEVELAND — Donald J. Trump, on the eve of accepting the Republican nomination for president, explicitly raised new questions on Wednesday about his commitment to automatically defending NATO allies if they are attacked, saying he would first look at their contributions to the alliance.
Asked about Russia’s threatening activities, which have unnerved the small Baltic States that are among the more recent entrants into NATO, Mr. Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing if those nations have “fulfilled their obligations to us.”
“If they fulfill their obligations to us,” he added, “the answer is yes.”
Mr. Trump’s statement appeared to be the first time that a major candidate for president had suggested conditioning the United States’ defense of its major allies. It was consistent, however, with his previous threat to withdraw American forces from Europe and Asia if those allies fail to pay more for American protection.
Mr. Trump also said he would not pressure Turkey or other authoritarian allies about conducting purges of their political adversaries or cracking down on civil liberties. The United States, he said, has to “fix our own mess” before trying to alter the behavior of other nations.
“I don’t think we have a right to lecture,” Mr. Trump said in a wide-ranging interview in his suite in a downtown hotel here, while keeping an eye on television broadcasts from the Republican National Convention. “Look at what is happening in our country,” he said. “How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?” (Read the full transcript.)
During a 45-minute conversation, Mr. Trump re-emphasized the hard-line nationalist approach that has marked his improbable candidacy, describing how he would force allies to shoulder defense costs that the United States has borne for decades, cancel longstanding treaties he views as unfavorable, and redefine what it means to be a partner of the United States.
He said the rest of the world would learn to adjust to his approach. “I would prefer to be able to continue” existing agreements, he said, but only if allies stopped taking advantage of what he called an era of American largess that was no longer affordable.
Giving a preview of his address to the convention on Thursday night, he said that he would press the theme of “America First,” his rallying cry for the past four months, and that he was prepared to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada if he could not negotiate radically better terms.
And everyone laughed and laughed at the mere idea that the orange clown could ever become president.
Actually, Europe didn’t think it was so funny, although I’m sure they assumed he could never win either:
Within hours of Mr. Trump’s remarks calling into question whether, as president, he would automatically defend NATO allies, European officials who were already nervous about American commitments appeared a little stunned by his comments.
“Solidarity among allies is a key value for NATO,” Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general and a former prime minister of Norway, said in a statement. He said he did not wish to “interfere” with the American election, but added: “Two world wars have shown that peace in Europe is also important for the security of the United States.”
The United States created the 28-nation alliance, and Article 5 of the NATO treaty, signed by President Truman, requires any member to come to the aid of another that NATO declares was attacked. It has been invoked only once: NATO pledged to defend the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
That commitment has long been considered a central element of deterring attacks in Europe, especially against smaller and weaker nations like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which joined after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, one of the most pro-American allies in the region, quickly posted on Twitter evidence that his small country was meeting its defense commitments, and noted it had contributed to the mission in Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump also said he was pleased that the controversy over similarities between passages in a speech by his wife, Melania, to the convention on Monday night and one that Michelle Obama gave eight years ago appeared to be subsiding. “In retrospect,” he said, it would have been better to explain what had happened — that an aide had incorporated the comments — a day earlier.
Aaaand:
When asked what he hoped people would take away from the convention, Mr. Trump said, “The fact that I’m very well liked.”
It’s obvious that Putin heard all this and figured it was worth his while to wait and see if Trump would pull the trigger and leave NATO. No doubt in all those secret meetings between the two of them where they tore up the translators notes, this was a topic of conversation. Putin could see that Trump had zero understanding of the history of Europe, the NATO alliance or how it was organized. He kept talking about nations not be up to date on their dues, which is so stupid Putin must have laughed himself silly after the meetings.
It was certainly worth his while to give Trump a chance to blow up NATO without Russia having to lift a finger. And if he’d won in 2020 I don’t think there’s much doubt that he would have done it. They barely held him back in the first term.