As President Donald Trump doubles down on how “expensive” it is for the U.S. military to train with the South Korean military, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), who regularly spends downtime golfing with the President, called Trump’s rationale for halting the practice “ridiculous.”
“The money we spend on training with our allies is money well spent,” he told CNN Tuesday. “It’s not a burden onto the American taxpayer to have a forward deployed force in South Korea. It brings stability. It’s a warning to China that you can’t just take over the whole region. So I reject that analysis that it costs too much, but I do accept the proposition, let’s stand down and see if we can find a better way here.”
Trump announced on Tuesday that he had agreed to halt “war games” — the joint military practice between the U.S. and South Korea — on the Korean peninsula, an exercise that’s widely regarded as an effort, in part, to saber-rattle North Korea. During a press conference following his denuclearization meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump cited the expense of the practice as rationale for agreeing to stop doing it. He doubled down on that defense in a tweet on Wednesday morning, claiming the U.S. saves “a fortune” by not participating.
We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith – which both sides are!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018
What is truly absurd is Americans don’t realize how much the US Military costs the nation and who our spending dwarfs the rest of the world leaving the Federal unable to take care of the homeland!
Hey Lindsey,
Aren’t you getting fatigued by all of the constant mopping up and then kissing up that you now feel you have to do to both ‘send messages’ to and then coddle to prevent ‘attack by twitter from’ Trump?
It really doesn’t look good on you.
No more ridiculous than Trump’s citing “National Security” as the reason to impose tariffs on an ally that we share intelligence with, that has fought beside and died beside us in war after war, that took in thousands of Americans after 9/11, and that operates joint ballistic missile radar sites with us. We have a sick vicious lying racist piece of crap for a president(no caps for scum) who is also a sexual predator. And he lies and lies and lies and lies…
Nope because Miss Lindsay is being blackmailed by Putin.
And ol’ Vlad must really have some sleazy Kompromat on his South Carolina Puppet!
How about you subtract all of the trade and commerce which is enabled by having large swaths of the planet being maintained in relative peace? Just for a start.
It’s much more expensive to go in and clean out a mess, like we’ve done in a couple of World Wars, then to engage in preventive maintenance.