AND, with the deadbeat NATO nations ramping up their military spending that they agreed to pay but weren’t, (per Stoltenberrg) NATO is now better able to defend each other Please read again (and a couple times more) the last paragraph which for your convenience is: ““President Trump has been very clear,” Stoltenberg told Fox News in 2019. “He is committed to NATO. He stated that clearly just a few days ago and also at the NATO summit in July. But at the same time, he has clearly stated that NATO allies need to invest more. And therefore at the summit in July last year,”
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump again claimed credit for an agreement by NATO members to increase spending on their own defense during his Republican convention speech on Thursday night, repeating a consistent but somewhat misleading talking point from his campaign rallies.
“Our NATO partners, as an example, were very far behind in their defense payments, but at my strong urging, they agreed to pay $130 billion more a year,” Trump said. “And this $130 billion will ultimately go to $400 billion a year.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump said to applause, “was amazed, after watching for so many years and said that President Trump did what no-one else was able to do.”
The speech doubled as Trump’s formal acceptance of his re-nomination to serve as president and an argument that he deserves four more years. In it, he said that other countries had been “taking advantage” of the United States on foreign policy and national defense before he became president.
Trump also repeated a mischaracterization of NATO members as delinquent in payments to the alliance and enlarged his role in convincing members to increase their defense spending.
Under NATO commitments forged 2014 — two years before Trump took office, and coinciding with Russia’s annexation of Crimea — each ally has until 2024 to reach their goal to spend 2 percent of its gross domestic product on its own defense.
Trump has used those pledges to make a vigorous push for allies to share more of the costs for their own protection. And Stoltenberg has given Trump some credit for Canada and European allies adding $130 billion to their defense budgets, on the way to $400 billion by 2024.
“President Trump has been very clear,” Stoltenberg told Fox News in 2019. “He is committed to NATO. He stated that clearly just a few days ago and also at the NATO summit in July. But at the same time, he has clearly stated that NATO allies need to invest more. And therefore at the summit in July last year, w
well, he got down in the mud with his recent accusations of Trump encouraging Putin to attack a NATO ally (look it up – Trump was browbeating a NATO deadbeat to “pay up” to support NATO)
I loved the first season of iZombie… fun premise of the series was she’d eat a brain of someone murdered and then have flashbacks to help the cops find the killer. Series kinda went downhill after the first season, though.
You sorta forgot that the NATO members committed to 2% of their GDP to defense