NATO leader jets to D.C. after Trump's "tough" Zelensky meeting

Axios ^ | October 21, 2025 | Hans Nichols , Barak Ravid

[MinorityRepublican]

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is scheduled to meet with President Trump at the White House on Wednesday, according to people familiar with the matter.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

I hope these NATO "leaders" are bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

[JonPreston]

The Financial Times finally said the quiet part out loud: Germany is collapsing — and the EU helped push it off the clif

Steel plants are closing. Car factories are shrinking. Business leaders are openly furious. The so-called “sick man of Europe” is sick again, but this time, the disease isn’t inefficiency. It’s economic suicide engineered by unelected EU elites and enforced by obedient puppets like Friedrich Merz.

Merz wants €500 billion to rescue industry, but from what? From policies his party endorsed. German output is crashing. Energy prices are unlivable. Bureaucratic strangulation kills investment. And while Merz beats the drum for a forever war in Ukraine, what was Berlin’s lifeline... Nord Stream, blown up, sabotaged with a shrug while Brussels and NATO pleaded the fifth.

The U.S. may have benefited, but the executioner stood in Brussels. Ursula von der Leyen and the Eurocrat caste led the charge: de-industrialize Germany, sanction Moscow, and send tanks to Ukraine while the German worker foots the bill. For what? Kiev was always going lose. Yet EU elites demand more tribute... more weapons, more factories shut, more pain.

And now?

🔻 German steel production down 12%
🔻 2 million fewer cars made than in 2017
🔻 Green levies and gas rationing
🔻 U.S. tariffs slap Germany while Berlin stays muzzled

The result: revolt. In NRW, a once CDU heartland, AfD now surges. Germans are waking up. They see who hollowed out their economy. It wasn’t Russia. It was their own leaders in Brussels and Berlin, marching to Davos drumbeats.

Germany isn’t “testing Europe’s patience.” Europe’s elites tested Germany’s limits, and they snapped them.

[House Atreides]

“I hope these NATO “leaders” are bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”
************************************************

Fine… as long as they don’t bring cargo aircrafts and container ships loaded with flattery we’ll be OK. I am, however, sensing that Trump is beginning to develop an immunity to flattery. And that will be a very good thing.

[House Atreides]

Good post. It’s time the German people wake up to the vast harm the European rulers are doing to them.

[delta7]

Riutte is a certified brain dead Neo-Con. He likes to talk tough, at the worst possible moment, creating problems for this administration.

[Williams]

Why shouldn’t they meet?

[ConservativeMind]

Germany has plenty of bodies to throw into the Ukraine war.

The more dead Germans there are, the more illegals they can then bring in.

[delta7]

Fools….it began when they blew up the Nordstream pipeline, which was their economic lifeline….they are collapsing by their own “ leadership “. Question is did the EU leaders plan the collapse or blunder into it?

No tears….Vlad wins either way.

[Brian Griffin]

Bring Euros.

Raytheon and Lockheed are waiting.

[jmacusa]

The Krauts weren't crying when they took away our steel industries and our auto manufacturing.

They sneered at us “Amis’’( a German WW2-era epithet for Americans) because we weren't sophisticated as they were to have better industries and made better cars. Nope. They didn't care.

I'm loving this. Deutscheland ist vorbei! Germany is over!

[McGruff]

More begging for us to get involved. It’s time the Europeans fight their own wars.

[tennmountainman]

Ursula von der Leyen Is the EU House Slut.

[Always A Marine]

Chihuahuas are always nipping at the big dogs, goading them to fight each other. Every nation in the Western Hemisphere knows from experience that it’s dangerous to scheme against a neighboring superpower. But even while it commits demographic suicide with replacement migration, Europe chooses to make trouble on Russia’s border — and does so at its own peril. American dollars are not infinite, and American blood should not be taken for granted. Europe had best smell the coffee...

[packagingguy]

“The more dead Germans there are, the more illegals they can then bring in.“

There’s a lot of truth to that statement; the only reason Europe would send troops is to get rid of their problematic native populations.

And lose they most certainly would.

They’d have no motivation to fight for a land which soon will no longer be theirs, and motivation is essential to victory.

Sun Tsu wrote on this very subject in the “Art of War”.

[KittyKares]

Leave us be. Send your own money, weapons, and people if it’s that important to you. We’ve done enough, and we’ve got plenty of our own problems.

[rxh4n1]

“They sneered at us “Amis’’

All of them do it, the weirdo Frogs and Brits and the rest. Those John Wayne and Reagan the Cowboy sneers. Those Eurofags are at it again, demanding that we should do the heavy lifting and dirty work for them again

[jmacusa]

Yup. The Limeys all over over You Tube begging us once again.

My grandfather, my namesake barely survived places like St. Mithel and The Meuse-Argonne in 1918, uncles of mine sweated it out in the Ardennes and on a cruiser in the Pacific in WW2. That inbred lay about king of theirs needs to get off his duff and help his people.

[Menes]

Sorry, Mr. Jmacusa, but as friendly as our interactions have been in the past, I am afraid I am not 100 % with you on this one.

I never heard that West German competition did extended harm to the US steel industry in the 1970s - after all, steel production went into a crisis all over the Western world, due to overproduction-and due to a saturation effect which had come by then, after war damage had been largely repaired. What is more, unless I am very wrong, the North American and European community steel markets were hardly dependent on each other.

And cars? I always thought that it was the Japanese competition which caused huge damage to the Big Three and other American vehicle manufacturers.

While German car makers were able to make some inroads into the American market with the long-gone VW Beetle, and later with the Mercedes diesels of the 1980s, I am unsure whether these sales were really able to make a sizeable dent in the earnings of US car manufacturers.

Today, I thought that German manufacturers on the American market were found under the caption: „Also ran…“

To me, it always seemed that the Japanese were much more of a peril to the Big Three.

And these airheads who were sneering at Americans are, sadly, well known to me. As much as they are full of themselves, certainly, still I call them « arrogant a-holes with an inferiority complex » who really should be ashamed of themselves and their behavior!

Sorry about my little rant, but this was really (terrible) news to me.

Lastly, I am sometimes really stymied to comprehend why I was supposed to survive cancer, after having been my parents’ caretaker in their twilight years, just in order to witness THIS? Lord, have mercy on this world ✝️🙏🏻

[jmacusa]

Look into how the West German steel and auto industries were riding high while the US steel and automotive industries were in decline because of NATO commitments and VW, BMW and Mercedes were flooding our markets.