NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called an emergency session of all 29 allies to address Trump’s demands, and the U.S. leader said his hectoring had paid off.
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“Everyone has agreed to substantially up their commitment”. “There’s a great collegial spirit in that room that I don’t think they’ve had in many years”.
GREENE: Well, what a U-turn that was.
Trump had opened the first day of talks on 11 July with a public diatribe against Germany, the second biggest state in the Western defence alliance, criticising its reliance on Russian gas imports and failure to spend more on defence.
“We haven’t had nuclear testing, missile launches, rocket launches…we got back hostages and prisoners”, Trump listed.
ALICE FORDHAM, BYLINE: Thank you. That’s where the summit was taking place.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Good morning. All I can say is: “Did you?”
The sit-down will mark Putin’s first interview with Wallace since September 2005 and his first interview with US media since June 2017. “We committed ourselves to spending a bit more”. Tensions rose on the final day of the two-day summit, when members met in an emergency session amid demands from Trump to speed up defense spending.
Bulgarian President Rumen Radev confirmed that Trump had made the demand and asked what it meant for the future of the alliance that has been the bedrock of European security for 70 years. So in a way, yes, he can claim credit for this because he’s already been given credit for it two days ago. The new communique says 24 allies will meet the 20% guideline by 2024. It was unclear anything concrete changed, although NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg spoke of a “new sense of urgency”.
Asked about Trump’s suggestion, Stoltenberg said he’ll focus on what’s been agreed to. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion articles on CNN. So details are still emerging.
As the dust cleared it was not clear what, if any concrete promises he had won.
French President Emmanuel Macron denied there were any new spending commitments.
However, when Trump was behind closed doors, it was quite a different story.
Trump then held an impromptu press conference. The official said there was fear that Trump could repeat his performance at the Group of Seven summit last month, when he pulled his consent from the closing declaration in a fit of pique after first agreeing to it. “I think 4 percent is the right number”. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said this is not a formal proposal and that Trump had merely “suggested” this increase.
He added that allies had agreed their national plans to get defence spending up to 2 per cent should be “credible”.
” I think it is a terrible thing that you have a pipeline coming from Russian Federation and I believe that Germany is going to get 56 to 60, or even 70 percent of their energy coming in from Russian Federation”.
Oh, and he’s also meeting with Putin this week. How is he setting it up?
But he made the claim about Crimea in response to a question from Fox News’ John Roberts on how relations could be improved while Putin continues to illegally occupy the region.
Trump added that although he did not know Putin very well, he hoped that one day he might become friends with him. And NATO officials seemed happy for that to happen. “It’s very detailed”, Macron said.
“We are paying for far too much of NATO”, Trump said. However, what does his repeated needling of allies mean for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation?
This is not the first time the United States leader has heaped praise on his own intellect.
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FORDHAM: Thanks for having me.
