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After President Donald J. Trump suggested he would encourage Russia to attack “delinquent” NATO allies, the reactions of many Republican officials included expressions of support, disgusted stares, and even hilarity. This applies to three themes of indifference.
Republican elites, accustomed to deflecting even Trump’s most outlandish statements, were quick to slam the comment. Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, said at a Saturday rally in South Carolina that he has previously threatened NATO governments to honor their financial commitments. Otherwise, he said, he would urge Russia to “do whatever it wants” to the country. .
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared surprised in a phone interview Sunday that he was even asked about Trump’s comments.
“Give me a break. I mean, Trump,” Graham said. “All I can say is that no one invaded anyone while President Trump was president. I think the point here is to get people to pay his way. ”
Sen. Marco Rubio, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, dryly explained on CNN on Sunday why he doesn’t care one bit.
“He talked about how he used leverage to embold people and become more active in NATO,” Rubio said on the State of the Union, justifying Trump’s comments as just a benefit. and rendered harmless. It’s a colorful version of what other U.S. presidents have done to get NATO members to spend more on their own defense. “I’m not worried at all because he’s been president before. I know exactly what he’s done to the NATO alliance and what he’s going to do. But there has to be an alliance. It’s not an American defense with a lot of small junior partners.”
Mr. Trump’s comments on stage at the rally were not included in his teleprompter remarks, according to a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But the comment was a new version of a story Mr. Trump had been telling for years, and it quickly inflamed European countries that already had serious doubts about Mr. Trump’s commitment to NATO’s collective self-defense clause. Ta. This article, known as Article 5, stipulates that an armed attack against a member state “will be considered an attack against all member states.”
Trump is trying to use his power over Republicans to crush recent bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill to send more weapons and critical resources to Ukraine to fight Russia. Although Ukraine is not a NATO member, helping Ukraine maintain its independence has been a critical mission of the alliance since Russian President Vladimir V. Putin launched a military invasion in February 2022. . And where Trump lands on his commitment to Ukraine, the international community and foreign policy experts say the president will likely seek a second term, with the U.S.’s most important military alliance, NATO. It’s like a stand-in for how you approach it.
Officials in smaller and more vulnerable NATO countries are particularly concerned. Trump has already suggested that it is not in America’s national interest to go to war with Russia to protect a small country like Montenegro.
International reaction to Trump’s comments on Saturday included an unusual public rebuke from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “Any suggestion that allies not defend each other undermines all of our national security, including ours, and puts American and European soldiers at risk,” Stoltenberg said.
The defense of Trump by several Republican officials, including Graham, reflected the party’s trajectory that the former president had largely bent to his will.
Eight years ago, when Trump was in the midst of his first presidential campaign, Graham would have had a very different reaction. Mr. Graham was initially one of Mr. Trump’s rivals in the primaries, which Mr. Trump quickly defeated, but in that campaign he opposed what he perceived as the serious threat of Mr. Trump’s isolationism. He saw himself as a champion of the Republican Party’s internationalist values. .
As an ally of the late Republican hawk and war hero Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Graham traveled the country warning anyone who would listen to the dangers of Mr. Trump. did. But after Mr. Trump won the election, Mr. Graham became a friend and confidant, and was welcomed into Mr. Trump’s inner circle. Many others have followed a similar path.
Mr. Rubio, another diplomatic hawk who ran against Mr. Trump for his party’s nomination in 2016, called Mr. Trump a “fraud” and warned him how dangerous he would be if entrusted with the country’s nuclear code. But after Trump won, he put those feelings aside, became friends with Trump, and is now one of several Republicans vying for his vice presidential nomination.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, one of the most hawkish Republicans on defense, said European countries in the alliance need to do more to defend themselves against Russian aggression. He suggested that there was.
“NATO countries like Germany that don’t spend enough on defense are already encouraging Russian aggression, and President Trump is just sounding the alarm,” Cotton said in an interview. “It is strength, not weakness, that deters aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine twice during the era of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but not during the era of Donald Trump.”
Several former Trump administration national security and foreign policy officials declined to discuss anecdotes in which Trump encouraged Russian aggression and threatened heads of state of NATO member states. . However, they said they had no recollection of such a meeting ever taking place.
Trump likes to tell outright falsehoods to make himself look like a tough negotiator. Former national security adviser John Bolton has warned that Trump would pull the U.S. out of NATO during his second term, but that Trump has threatened to encourage other countries’ leaders to invade Russia. He said he had never heard of it.
Another former official, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid provoking Trump, subtly described the story as an “exaggeration.” Yet another former government official, Trump’s second national security adviser, retired Army lieutenant general H.R. McMaster, summed up Trump’s comments in one word: “irresponsible.”
Trump has frequently praised Putin, calling the invasion of Ukraine a work of “genius,” and has long praised Putin as a “strong” leader.
During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called on Russia to “find” emails that Hillary Clinton, then a Democratic presidential candidate and a target of Mr. Putin, had deleted from her private email server. He suggested that Mr. Putin is morally no different from the American leader. When former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly pressed Trump shortly after taking office about his admiration for Putin, calling the Russian leader “a murderer,” Trump responded: Is our country really that innocent? ”
But as president, Mr. Trump’s policy toward Russia was at times tougher than that of his predecessor. Trump’s allies are emphasizing this point when they dismiss statements such as his Saturday’s as rhetorical rhetoric. Mr. Trump’s allies say he has no intention of weakening NATO in his second term, and in his first term he approved sending anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, but Russia seized Crimea in 2014. Later, it was pointed out that President Obama did not do this.
Although he is running to retake the White House, as polls suggest he is likely to do so, Trump has remained mum about his intentions towards NATO. His campaign website includes a cryptic line: “We must complete the process begun under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and mission.”
When asked what that means, Trump and his team declined to provide details.
Trump has focused on private conversations about treating foreign aid as loans, after he helped undermine previous efforts as Senate Republicans try again to pass the aid package on Sunday. He had posted about it on social media. But Russia’s comments seemed to surprise most of his team.
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, was asked to explain the former president’s comments, including whether they were an invitation to another invasion from Russia, but he did not directly address the question.
“Those who hold the pearls of the Democratic Party and the media seem to have forgotten that there were four years of peace and prosperity under President Trump, but Europe has seen death and destruction under the Obama-Biden administration, and now So we’ve seen more death and destruction under the Biden administration,” Miller said. “President Trump increased NATO spending by requiring allies to pay, but Joe Biden has gone back to letting them take advantage of American taxpayers. Not paying for defense will lead to more wars.” It’s not surprising that it happens.”
NATO countries’ defense spending increased under the Trump administration, but expanded even more significantly under the Biden administration in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who worked in the Trump administration and is close to Trump and has been outspoken about the need to defend Ukraine, spoke at the request of the Trump campaign and said he believes in Trump. He said no. Trump was opening the door to a new invasion.
Kellogg said Trump has a “record of deterrence.”
“I really think he’s on to something,” he added, saying he believes Trump’s goal is to get NATO members to focus on Article 3 of the NATO founding treaty. Ta. Armed attack.
“I don’t think that’s encouragement at all, because we know what he meant,” Kellogg said.
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