Reactions to Trump's remarks about NATO
Then-President Donald Trump listens as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a working lunch with NATO members that have met their financial commitments to the the organization in December 2019, in Watford, England. Credit: AP/Evan Vucci
Reactions to Trump remarks on NATO
Former President Donald Trump is brazenly standing up for American taxpayers who have been subsidizing nonpaying members of NATO [“Leaders: Trump puts NATO at risk,” News, Feb. 12]. He did this by declaring that Russia can do “whatever the hell they want” to the delinquent NATO members.
This is a logical extension of Trump’s Sept. 2, 1987 open letter in an advertisement in three U.S. dailies entitled, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”
Trump has remained remarkably consistent over the past 37 years in his perception that America is being exploited by these freeloading nations living off the largesse of America’s military deterrence, subsidized by the abused American taxpayer since the Marshall Plan was enacted in 1948.
In contrast, at President Joe Biden’s first Group of Seven summit in 2021, he said, “America is back at the table,” which translates into “Happy days are here again for you freeloaders, and after a four-year interruption, the U.S. taxpayers will resume getting hosed.”
— Eugene R. Dunn, Medford
Americans, typically shortsighted, claimed to have won the Cold War. But victory will belong to Russian President Vladimir Putin should a U.S. president tear down Ukraine’s defensive wall, a far more decisive and consequential act than the symbolic division of Berlin.
The probable result? There will be warfare, and the United States will not escape it.
— Brian Kelly, Rockville Centre
It appears ironic when Donald Trump claims that NATO nations who do not pay their fair share are delinquent. Yet when he didn’t pay his fair share of taxes, he called that being smart.
— Bill Eddings, Massapequa Park
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