The US presidential candidate from the Republican Party, Donald Trump, said that if he is elected president he may abandon a guarantee of protection of NATO states.
Photo: ABC News / Getty Images
Speaking to the New York Times, the US presidential candidate from the Republican Party, Donald Trump, said that if he is elected president he may abandon a guarantee of protection of NATO states. According to him, the US would help the allies only if they have ‘fulfilled their obligations” to the USA.
According to the treaty signed by all members of NATO, states should come to the aid of any member that is attacked.
However, Trump has already said that he is going to adheres to the foreign policy strategy aimed at reducing US expenditure and involvement abroad.
The White House has not responded directly to Trump’s words, but spokesman Josh Earnest said that the US commitment to NATO was ‘ironclad’. He also added that Washington’s commitment to defend its NATO allies should not be underestimated by potential enemies.
“The president renewed that commitment just two weeks ago today when he travelled to Warsaw, Poland, to attend the NATO summit,” Josh Earnest said.
Meanwhile, the Republican candidate also said that if he is elected president he “would not pressure US allies over crackdowns on political opposition and civil liberties.” According to Trump, the US had to “fix our own mess” before “lecturing” other nations.
He also noted that would like to reassess the costs to the US of longstanding defense treaties, to force allies to take on those costs, and to close US bases abroad. “If we decide we have to defend the United States, we can always deploy” from American soil, “and it will be a lot less expensive,” he said.
My 5th grade president said he would ban homework and put candy machines in every classroom.
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People lie to win elections. Politicians lie when they are in office. These are facts.
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I’m gonna laugh when it turns out Trump is not a bigot but was just trolling racist Americans who otherwise would not have voted. He’s like a conservative Bernie Sanders – a “man of the people” who will say pretty much anything to get the disenfranchised back into politics.
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I warned my (many) friends who supported him that Sanders was playing a long game, hoping for a behind-closed-doors deal from Clinton late in the race. There was simply no way the establishment or the military would have accepted his leadership, period. I think his job was to stir the pot and get young liberals politically active. Even if only 1/4 of his supporters vote for Clinton in November that is still significantly more than she had before.
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I believe the Republican party tried something similar. However in Trump’s case the populist candidate proved to be wildly popular, far more than was anticipated. Another big factor was Trump is not competing against an incumbent Republican administration. Hillary has most of the benefits of an incumbent enjoys due to all of Bill’s old appointments and Obama’s new ones helping her. Loretta Lynch is a perfect example of this.
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I think Trump was supposed to concede to Cruz or Rubio but instead “went rogue” mid-campaign. He remained a “wild card” until a few weeks ago when it was clear he had won the nomination. Since that point he has been indirectly backtracking on a lot of his promises by cozying up to folks like Mike Pence.
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I think Trump is demonstrating to the Republican elite that he is a very clever man – who despite all of his fiery rhetoric does not want to be another Kennedy.