NATO’s funding and stability Trump said, “I
Post# of 123643
Trump said, “I did a hell of a job getting money for NATO because nobody else — NATO had no money. NATO couldn’t have even prosecuted what they’re doing right now. They had no money.” He also said, “They had no cash, they were dying.”
Facts First: While NATO chief Stoltenberg did give Trump partial credit for prodding member countries to increase their defense spending, it’s just not true that “NATO had no money” before Trump became president. Defense spending by NATO members other than the US was about $262 billion in 2016, certainly not nothing. (It rose to about $314 billion in 2020, Trump’s last full year in office.) And there’s simply no basis in reality for the claim that NATO was “dying” before Trump came along; Lagadec noted to CNN in 2023, when Trump made similar comments, that the only NATO member that had given “any sign” in recent years that it was thinking about leaving the alliance “was… the US, under Trump.”