WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that NATO had to remain “strong” — as the military alliance’s top official praised him for sparking a “staggering” boost in military spending among members of the 32-nation pact.
Trump presented himself as chief advocate for the transatlantic alliance as his special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian officials in Moscow to negotiate a potential cease-fire in Ukraine.
“You have to keep NATO strong. You have to keep it relevant,” Trump said in the Oval Office while hosting NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister.
Trump repeated well-worn boasts of pressuring European countries to boost military spending during his first term after Rutte credited him with a further escalation in arms purchases since he reentered the White House on Jan. 20.
The remarks were notable as Trump sought to portray a united front amid negotiations to end the three-year war between Ukraine, which has been financed and armed by the alliance and Russia — after he previously cast doubt on US willingness to defend European countries who didn’t pay up.
“You basically originated the fact that in Europe we are now spending, when you take it in aggregate $700 billion more in defense than when you came in office in 2016 and 2017. But that was Trump 45,” Rutte said.
“When you look at Trump 47, what’s happened in the last couple of weeks is really staggering. The Europeans are committing to a package of $800 billion in defense spending. The Germans now potentially up to half-a-trillion extra in defense spending. And of course, you had [UK Prime Minister] Keir Starmer here, the British prime minister, and others, all committing to much higher defense spending.”
Rutte said that he hoped to work with Trump so that NATO is “really invigorated under your leadership, and we are getting there.”
Trump recalled how he had strong-armed many NATO nations to boost their defense spending to a minimum of 2% of GDP during his first term. He recently called for that threshold to be 5%.
“I was able to raise hundreds of billions of dollars. I just said, ‘We’re not going to be involved with you if you’re not going to pay.’ And the money started pouring in. And NATO became much stronger because of my actions,” Trump recounted of his first term.
“I said, ‘No, I won’t protect if you’re not paying, if you’re delinquent or if the money isn’t paid, why would we do that?’ And as soon as I said that, I got a little hit from the press, because they said, ‘Oh, gee, that’s not very nice,’ but if you said the other nobody would have paid.”
Trump added that “NATO became strong from that standpoint. And now we have to use it wisely.”
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