Donald Trump said yesterday (Friday) that the US might not go to help other NATO member states if the need arose, during a business event in Miami.
NATO “just wasn’t there”, the US president said, speaking of a “terrible mistake”, apparently referring to his request – left dead letter – for US allies to provide military support to open the Strait of Hormuz.
“We spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO, hundreds of billions to protect them, and we’ve always been there for them, but now, given their actions, I guess we shouldn’t be, should we?” asked Trump.
In recent days, US President Trump has escalated his criticisms of NATO, notably via Truth Social: he has called it a “paper tiger”, and slammed the “cowardly” leaders of its member states, signalling that the US “will remember” how it dealt with them – he repeated that last phrase yesterday during a cabinet meeting.
