Trump: If NATO members don't pay, I'm not going to defend them

The Star

US President Donald Trump cast doubt on Thursday (March 6) on his willingness to defend Washington's NATO allies, saying that he would not do so if they are not paying enough for their own defence.  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

Transcript

00:00Are you making any changes to NATO where a NATO country gets attacked but they're not

00:07paying enough dues so the United States doesn't defend them?

00:11Well I've said that to them.

00:12I said if you're not going to pay, we're not going to defend.

00:14I said that seven years ago and because of that they paid hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:20I said if you're not going to pay your bills, we're not going to defend you.

00:25And it also went for the attack.

00:27And if they got attacked, they said well does that mean you won't defend us?

00:30I said are you current or are you delinquent?

00:34They said if we were delinquent, would you?

00:36I said nope, I would not.

00:38And because of that, as you know, hundreds of billions of dollars came into NATO.

00:42You wouldn't have NATO right now if I weren't there.

00:45And your previous Secretary General has said that.

00:50He said he's never seen anything like it.

00:52When I came to NATO, when I first had my first meeting, I noticed that people weren't

00:57paying their bills at all.

00:59And I said I should wait until my second meeting and I did.

01:02And I brought that up and I said if you don't pay your bills, we're not going to participate,

01:06we're not going to protect you.

01:08And when I said that, as soon as I said that, it was amazing how the money came in.

01:13The money came in and now they have money.

01:16But even now it's not enough.

01:18It's really not enough.

01:19They should be paying more.

01:20On Peter's question, are you going to make that policy, U.S. policy, that the U.S. wouldn't

01:23defend NATO countries that don't pay?

01:25I think it's common sense, right?

01:27If they don't pay, I'm not going to defend them.

01:29No, I'm not going to defend them.

01:30I got into a lot of heat when I said that.

01:33You said, oh, he's violating NATO.

01:36And you know, the biggest problem I have with NATO, I really, you know, I mean, I know the

01:39guys very well.

01:40They're friends of mine.

01:42But if the United States was in trouble and we called them, we said we got a problem.

01:50France, we got a problem.

01:51A couple of others I won't mention.

01:53Do you think they're going to come and protect us?

01:57They're supposed to.

01:58I'm not so sure.

01:59Yeah, Peter.

02:00Also, why stay in NATO at all?

02:05I view NATO as potentially good, but you got to get, you got to get some good thinking

02:12in NATO.

02:13It's very unfair what's been happening.

02:14Until I came along, we were paying close to 100 percent of NATO.

02:19So think of it.

02:20We're paying 100 percent of their military and they're screwing us on trade.

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