Multiple times throughout the course of 2018, President Trump suggested privately that he wanted to pull the U.S. out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, The New York Times reported.
According to current and former administration officials who spoke to the Times, Trump vocalized during the NATO summit last summer that he didn’t understand the point of the alliance and characterized it as a financial burden on the U.S. At the time, Trump’s national security team clambered to keep Trump’s private wishes quiet to avoid uproar.
The report of Trump’s fickle relationship with the military alliance takes on heightened importance given reports that the FBI investigated Trump in 2016 over suspicions that he was working for the Kremlin and that he tried to keep the contents of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin private from aides. The weakening of NATO has long been a goal of the Kremlin.
