'NATO is dead'
Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose
CNN Meanwhile in America, January 11, 2024
If Donald Trump wins the Iowa caucuses Monday, it will come as a rude wake-up call for US allies hoping they’d not have to think about him returning to power.
A victory for Trump in the first official voting of the 2024 campaign would be a huge step toward his third-straight Republican nomination and a toss-up White House race with President Joe Biden in November.
If he wins a second term, Trump would surely be even more of a force of global instability than he was the first time around – and America's allies would be in his sights. Just how rough things could get is borne out in new revelations about a meeting Trump had while still president with senior European Union officials four years ago.
Thierry Breton, EU commissioner for internal market, recalled the former president’s remarks anecdotally at an event on Tuesday at the European Parliament.
"You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you," Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020, according to Breton, who was also present at the meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, his office confirmed.
Breton's office also confirmed he recalled at the Tuesday event Trump saying, "NATO is dead,” and “we will quit NATO" at the 2020 meeting. “And by the way, you owe me $400 billion, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defense,” Trump also allegedly said, according to Breton.
A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
But Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa jumped on the remarks, saying, “Donald Trump's threats to weaken NATO and side with Vladimir Putin undermine America’s strength on the global stage and threaten our national security. As president, Donald Trump spent four years cozying up to dictators and making our country less safe.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg brushed off anxiety about Trump. "No other major power has as many friends and allies as the US does in NATO," Stoltenberg said. "It makes the US safer and stronger to have more than 30 allies in NATO, and therefore I'm confident US will continue to support NATO."
We’ll see. But Europe should probably start making a Plan B.
