Posted on 02/12/2024 7:59:09 AM PST by conservative98
After Donald J. Trump suggested he had threatened to encourage Russia to attack “delinquent” NATO allies, the response among many Republican officials has struck three themes — expressions of support, gaze aversion or even cheerful indifference.
[cut]
In a phone interview on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina seemed surprised to even be asked about Mr. Trump’s remark.
“Give me a break — I mean, it’s Trump,” Mr. Graham said. “All I can say is while Trump was president nobody invaded anybody. I think the point here is to, in his way, to get people to pay.”
[cut]
Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican Party’s top-ranking official on the Senate Intelligence Committee, struck a matter-of-fact tone as he explained on CNN on Sunday why he was not bothered in the least.
“He told the story about how he used leverage to get people to step up to the plate and become more active in NATO,” Mr. Rubio said on “State of the Union,” rationalizing and sanitizing Mr. Trump’s comments as just a more colorful version of what other U.S. presidents have done in urging NATO members to spend more on their own defense. “I have zero concern, because he’s been president before. I know exactly what he has done and will do with the NATO alliance. But there has to be an alliance. It’s not America’s defense with a bunch of small junior partners.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, among the most hawkish Republicans on national defense, suggested European nations in the alliance needed to do more to sustain their own defenses against Russian incursions.
“NATO countries that don’t spend enough on defense, like Germany, are already encouraging Russian aggression and President Trump is simply ringing the warning bell,” Mr. Cotton said in an interview. “Strength, not weakness, deters aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine twice under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but not under Donald Trump.”
Thank you Big Marco, Tom and Lindsey.
Our Trump dwells in the mind of all the Euro Globalist leaders
More fake news from the fake news generator.
Pass the stinkin’ Senate border bill or I’ll turn even more scumbag invaders loose on you.
Whatever is necessary to make skinflint Europeans pay their fair share is fine with me.
Here in the USA, Congress would throw you in prison for not paying what it thinks is your fair share.
I wonder what our new “friends” the Russians think about our President Trump?
“while Trump was president nobody invaded anybody.”
Why should Lindsey complain?
All Trump is saying in essence is that the European countries have to spend more of their own money to buy products from Lindsey’s Military Industrial Complex buddies.
Nothing burger, Trump is correct again.
In reality, if he even if he left the Russian part out....the media would have said something similar....you can bet on it.
G.O.P. Officials, Once Critical, Stand by Trump After NATO Comments:
Defending Donald Trump or deflecting his statements, some top G.O.P. officials reflected the trajectory of a party that the former president has largely bent to his will.
encourage Russia to attack “delinquent” NATO allies, the response among many Republican officials has struck three themes — expressions of support, gaze aversion or even cheerful indifference.
Republican Party elites have become so practiced at deflecting even Mr. Trump’s most outrageous statements that they quickly batted this one away. Mr. Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, had claimed at a Saturday rally in South Carolina that he once threatened a NATO government to meet its financial commitments — or else he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to that country.
In a phone interview on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina seemed surprised to even be asked about Mr. Trump’s remark.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/us/politics/trump-nato-republicans.html
Another idiotic remark. The entire news media - even THE NEW YORK TIMES - was burying Biden for his babbling Thursday presser and the contents of the Hur report.
Trump however, can’t keep his mouth shut and hands the media another shiny object.
It’s disgraceful that he isn’t beating Biden by double digits. Jimmy Carter level approval ratings for Biden and Trump is basically tied with him. It’s gonna be a long campaign...
I read the transcript. It actually starts with President Trump talking about getting ukraine, israel to accept loans rather than just assistance money. His idea was that if they ever turn on us, that we can then ask for the loan back. That led him into discussing getting deadbeat nato nations to pay their promised shares of nato funding.
Should we fund an auto accident, if we’re a car insurance company, and a car owner hasn’t paid their bill in a while? I kind of doubt it.
Should we spend blood and treasure defending a nato deadbeat that refuses to participate in defending itself? Trump said, in his sarcastic way, not really.
Shaggie and The Ugly Duck.
The Germans are pissed - I love it
Once the Germans were all war-like and mean
But that couldn't happen again
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then
-Tom Lehrer
I flipped over to MSNBC this morning just to see what garbage those morons were spewing today, and the whole Morning Joe crew was saying Trump wants all of our NATO allies to be attacked by Russia. I started lmao.
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