Trump Vomits Out Some Nonsense About Making NATO Great Again

Bitch, please, we were there.

Three guesses which gone-but-not-departed idiot said this:

I hope everyone is able to remember that it was me, as President of the United States, that got delinquent NATO members to start paying their dues, which amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars. There would be no NATO if I didn't act strongly and swiftly. Also, it was me that got Ukraine the very effective anti-tank busters (Javelins) when the previous Administration was sending blankets. Let History so note!

Oh yes he did. The same stupid sonofabitch who threatened to withdraw from NATO, giving Vladimir Putin the thing he wants most in the world, is now taking credit for strengthening the organization. Trump, who literally ordered American troops out of Germany, is now pretending NATO would have imploded without his wise guidance.

Trump continues to treat NATO as a protection racket , rather than a global stabilization force. Here on Planet Earth, NATO isn't funded by "dues"; member countries are obligated to spend a percentage of their GDP on their own defense.

It was idiotic in 2018 when Trump said , "Many countries owe us a tremendous amount of money from many years back, where they're delinquent as far as I'm concerned, because the United States has had to pay for them. So if you go back 10 or 20 years, you'll just add it all up, it's massive amounts of money is owed." And it's even more idiotic today for him to take credit as if his temper tantrums caused these countries to "pay up." In point of fact, Germany finally did agree to increase military spending   yesterday in response to Putin's batshit incursion into Ukraine. Trump's histrionics had nothing to do with it.

And you don't have to fire up the Wayback Machine to remember Trump describing Putin's invasion of a sovereign country as "genius."

"Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful," Trump gushed to his pal Buck Sexton last week. As if marching in and taking over neighboring countries at the point of a gun was some kind of strategic coup, as long as you can get away with it.

"Putin is smart," Trump arglebargled to a crowd at Mar-a-Lago. "He's taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I'd say that's pretty smart. It is a vast, vast location, a piece of land with lot of people and just walking right in."  

Turns out, not so much actually . And with the entire Russian economy in freefall, Trump would now like to take credit.

But while we're reviewing the record, about those Javelins, we are old enough to remember when Donald Trump tried to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for dirt on President Biden and his son using those very anti-tank missiles.

"I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes," said President Zelenskyy.

"I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it," Trump responded, before making it clear what he wanted in exchange for delivering the defense aid that had already been allocated by Congress so that Ukraine could hold off a menacing Putin.

"There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me," he said, adding later that "I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call."

And if we're making a full inventory of the record, even before Trump got into office, his incoming national security advisor Michael Flynn promised to lift sanctions imposed by the Obama administration in response to Russian electoral interference in 2016.

So, let's be crystal clear here, since the GOP is doing some pretty advanced yoga to contort itself into a position where Trump held off Putin and Biden invited him in the door. Trump gladly accepted Russian electoral interference, did everything he could to impress Putin,   had to be pressured into sanctioning Russia by his own party, and actively praised that country's bloodthirsty dictator for waging an unprovoked war on a democratically elected government.

To the extent that Trump can take credit for strengthening NATO, it's because he spent four years proving daily that the United States is an unreliable ally that can't be trusted to put rational leaders in the White House. If anyone is making NATO great again, it's Vladimir Putin, and certainly not on purpose.

In summary and in conclusion, PISS ALL THE WAY OFF.

And OPEN THREAD.

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