Donald Trump voiced skepticism about NATO and predicted that other countries would follow Britain’s example of leaving the European Union in an interview Sunday.
Speaking with the Times of London and the German Bild newspaper, Trump said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is “obsolete.”
“It’s obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago,” he said, according to excerpts published in Bloomberg from Bild’s version of the interview.
“Secondly, countries aren’t paying what they should,” he said, adding that NATO “didn’t deal with terrorism.”
Trump also criticized the European Union, and specifically German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for its handling of the refugee crisis, and said that more countries would follow the example set by Brexit.
“If you ask me, more countries will leave,” he said.
”The fact that your pound sterling has gone down? Great. Because business is unbelievable in a lot of parts in the UK, as you know,” Trump said, as quoted in the Times’ version of the interview. “I think Brexit is going to end up being a great thing.”
“People, countries, want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity,” he continued. “But, I do believe this, if they hadn’t been forced to take in all of the refugees, so many, with all the problems that it … entails, I think that you wouldn’t have a Brexit. This was the final straw that broke the camel’s back.
Trump also called the EU a “vehicle for Germany.” He said he respected Merkel but that she made a “catastrophic” mistake in accepting so many refugees—over one million people from North Africa and the Middle East between 2015 and 2016, according to the Times.
As for Britain, Trump said he would be meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May “very quickly” to work out a trade deal that was “good for both sides.”
Trump’s statecraft.
THROW IT UP IN THE AIR AND HOPE
70 years of alliance to prevent war in Europe is obsolete he says (shakes head).
Trump could get us all killed.
Trump does not understand the reason NATO exists.
Aaaaand in a continuing series of astonishing but undoubtedly completely innocent coincidences, everything Trump says about foreign policy is on Putin’s wish list.
Four days.
Like the United States Constitution.
Trump clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s simply following his go-to strategy of divide, divide, divide.
"Righteousness is a wide path. Self-righteousness is a bullhorn and a blindfold."
The EU has been mostly an American project, fostered by us, because when Europeans are not united, World Wars happen, and the last two cost us too many fine young men and too much treasure.
This bit of insidious union busting is Putin’s revenge for Reagan’s. And it shows Trump’s ignorance and gullibility. Again.