Donald Trump is suggesting that as president, the United States would not automatically come to the defense of a NATO ally under attack.
The aid from the United States would depend on how much that country has contributed to the NATO alliance, the Republican presidential nominee said in an interview Wednesday night, a day before he is set to accept the GOP nomination at the Republican National Convention.
The New York Times asked specifically if Trump would assist the smaller Baltic states that most recently joined NATO if Russia were to attack them. The billionaire businessman responded that he would assist them only after considering considering whether they “have fulfilled their obligations to us.”
He added, “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.”
On the recent failed coup attempt in Turkey, Trump said the U.S. should try to “fix our own mess” before interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries.
“I don’t think we have a right to lecture,” he said in reiterating prior calls for a less aggressive America. “Look at what is happening in our country. How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?”
Trump said that though he would “prefer to be able to continue” with existing agreements, this will only happen if unnamed countries stop taking advantage of what he called a dependence on American generosity.
Trump also repeated previous calls for reining in U.S. military bases abroad.
“If we decide we have to defend the United States, we can always deploy (from American soil),” Trump said, “and it will be a lot less expensive.”
And in the fight against the Islamic State, Trump said he believes he could persuade Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to up his country’s fight against the terror group.
Hillary Clinton’s senior policy adviser jumped at the Trump comments, saying the GOP nominee “apparently doesn’t even believe in the free world.”
“Republicans, Democrats and Independents who help build NATO into the most successful military alliance in history would all come to the same conclusion: Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit and fundamentally ill-prepared to be our Commander in Chief,” Jake Sullivan said in a statement.
Trump’s top aide, Paul Manafort, told a reporter with Mother Jones Wednesday night that Trump was misquoted about NATO.
The Times’ reporter in the meeting with Trump, Maggie Haberman, stood by her report, saying Manafort wasn’t in the interview, but a transcript is coming soon.
