Trump Celebrates 5% Pledge From NATO Ally Nations Before Departing Summit

Forbes Breaking News

At a press briefing at the NATO Summit, President Trump celebrated the 5% commitment from ally nations.

Transcript

00:00well thank you very much this has been an honor it was a fairly long trip but worth it

00:27tremendous things have been accomplished as you probably noticed listen to a lot of wonderful

00:33speeches from the heads of a lot of wonderful countries but i want to thank you for joining us

00:40at the conclusion of a highly productive nato summit in the netherlands i want to thank them for

00:47the royal treatment they've given us couldn't couldn't have been nicer and it's a beautiful

00:54country really a beautiful country coming in i saw the most beautiful trees in fact i want to bring

00:59some back with me i want to also thank i had i had breakfast this morning with the king and queen

01:07and they're incredible people i called i said your central casting beautiful people great people

01:14big beautiful heart and uh i enjoyed that and also uh nato secretary general mark rota

01:24who's been terrific he's been a friend of mine used to be right here running this

01:29wonderful country now he's the nato secretary general is doing a fantastic job

01:34and the prime minister we appreciate everything you've done and as you know last weekend the

01:39united states successfully carried out a massive precision strike on iran's nuclear

01:46enrichment facilities and it was very very successful it was called obliteration

01:53no other military on earth could have done it and now this incredible exercise of american strength

02:00has paved the way for peace with the historic ceasefire agreement late monday and we call it the 12 day war

02:08spoke to a few people i guess that just sounded like the right the right name it was a 12 day war

02:14and we think it's over i don't think they're going to be going back at each other i don't think so

02:20not only have we dealt decisively with the critical threat of iran's nuclear program which was what i

02:26wanted i said iran cannot have a nuclear weapon i've said that for 15 years long before i decided

02:33it to do the political thing but we've also reasserted the credibility of american deterrence

02:41which is like no other the people at nato said this never been anything you know i rebuilt the entire

02:47military during my first term and uh we have a great military we have great generals i got to know the good

02:55ones and the bad ones we kept the good ones over the past two days i was honored to participate in

03:01the nato leaders meeting and also had extremely good individual discussions with the king and the

03:07queen secretary general ruta and the prime minister great discussions very knowledgeable people major

03:15focus of our conversations at the summit was the need for other nato members to take up the burden of the

03:23defense of europe and that included the financial burden as you know it was

03:28two percent and we got it up to five percent and they said a couple of them came up to me one in

03:34particular said sir we've been trying to get it up to three percent for 20 years and we haven't been

03:39able and you got it up to five percent so they're going to be most of them i guess almost all of them

03:44are going to be contributing now five percent the number that uh people are surprised at but you need

03:51the united states accounts for two-thirds of all nato defense spending since i began pushing for

03:58additional commitments in 2017 believe it or not our allies have increased spending by 700 billion

04:04dollars i said to people you don't have any money and a lot of them weren't paying

04:09then so i started the process and i picked it up as soon as i got back which is six months ago

04:15and following my election last november almost all have accelerated plans to reach the two percent

04:24three percent four percent and then ultimately very quickly five percent and uh all of this is going

04:30to be done very quickly almost immediately you probably know this as well as i do i'm sure they've

04:36been talking about it's really been a big focus in a very historic milestone this week the nato allies

04:43committed to dramatically increase their defense spending to that five percent of gdp something

04:49that no one really thought possible and they said you did it sir you did it well i don't know if i did

04:54it but i think i did this will be known as the hague defense commitment which is pretty good pretty

05:03appropriate when the allies reach this number it will add more than one trillion dollars a year

05:09think of that one trillion per year to our common defense and this is a monument really to uh to

05:17victory but it's a monumental win for the united states because we were carrying much more than our

05:24fair share was quite unfair actually but this is a big win for europe and for actually western

05:30civilization for years past administrations failed to get most allies to contribute uh even the two

05:38percent i remember when i came here we had four countries that were up to two percent and uh i

05:43remember poland was there a couple of them were there and uh but most of them were we had 28 at the

05:49time as you know it's increased a little bit and uh they've agreed now to more than double their

05:55budgets in all cases and europe stepping up to take more responsibility for its security will help

06:01prevent future disasters like the horrible situation with russia and ukraine and hopefully

06:07we're going to get that solved last week they lost 7 000 soldiers mostly soldiers but they're also

06:14getting hit in kiev they're getting hit in some of the towns also uh and that means life life is

06:23disappearing also in the cities and towns should have never happened would have never happened if i was

06:28president said it a thousand times and it never did happen it's never even thought about but it's vital

06:35that this additional money be spent on very serious military hardware not bureaucracy and uh hopefully

06:43that hardware is going to be made in america because we have the best hardware in the world you saw that

06:48where 14 missiles were shot at us the other day and uh they were very nice they gave us warning they said

06:56we're going to shoot them is one o'clock okay they said it's fine and uh everybody was emptied off the

07:03base so they couldn't get hurt except for the gunners they call them the gunners and uh out of 14

07:10high-end missiles that were shot at the base in qatar all 14 as you know were shot down by our equipment

07:18amazing stuff amazing that they can do it's like shooting a bullet with a bullet it's the same thing if

07:24you think about it 14 out of 14 and they were they weren't even that surprised i said that you do

07:31that well often they say we pretty much do sir the ukraine crisis has also highlighted the urgency of

07:39rebuilding our defense industrial base both in the united states and among the allied nations we cannot

07:45afford to be dependent on foreign adversaries for critical minerals and as you know we made a deal with

07:52ukraine to take a vast amount of the land they have for minerals we need it and once again i want

07:59to thank all of the people in the netherlands incredible people it's a great place and all of

08:05the nato allies for the tremendous summit that we just had

08:09to thank you so much thank you to do wonderful you just received this as much or a huge leadman

08:11to join be watching this as a huge majority of throngousous together we're drawing

08:15you just had an Aaron on Frontenari on our side to check into theразers cloud

08:16that were able to do that after some small property that we reallycelled as much as possible

08:20that also we're DOA that hasn't found a huge deal with the platform they say

08:21that's where there were no new units not required at a very weight dump in the time we are

08:25then as a huge

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