Don’t expect the liberal media to report this, but President Trump absolutely triumphed at the recent NATO summit. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte texted President Trump as he traveled to the NATO gathering, saying “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.”. It only got better from there.
I will be writing about this in more detail for The Hill tomorrow, but knowing that our media and the Democrats will downplay the NATO summit, at which European leaders committed to raising their defense spending to 5% of GDP, I wanted to double up on bringing it to everyone’s attention. After all, between Pete Hegseth chewing up the liberal media and spitting out the pieces, the UNELECTED Senate Parliamentarian neutering the Big Beautiful Bill and Zohran Mamdani scaring the daylights out of New Yorkers, who surely will find a way of toppling the 33-year-old Socialist antisemite, there is a LOT going on. (I’m thinking of adopting President Trump’s exquisite and untamed use of capital letters- works for him after all!)
Remember that in 2017 Trump railed about how Europe was taking advantage of the U.S.? Consider: In that year, the United States accounted for only 51.1% of the allies’ combined GDP but 71.7% of combined defense spending. While the U.S. was spending nearly $700 billion on defense, Germany for instance, was spending $45 billion. This was not right, and Trump called out Europe for underinvesting in their own security.
Vladimir Putin brought home the risk of that underinvestment by invading Ukraine. But it was Trump’s constant bullying that pushed NATO to commit to the unimaginable 5% of GDP target at the recent summit. That’s a win – for the U.S., for Europe and for the world.
Not only did the leaders agree to increase spending, but Trump also recommitted to the alliance. In the press conference afterwards, where he aggressively took on the liberal media for downplaying the effectiveness of U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump touted the decision to up spending, saying that the U.S. was carrying far more than its fair share. He is right.
What many supporters of President Trump admire is his ability to look at old problems and challenges in a new way, “unburdened from what has been”, as clueless Kamala Harris might say. Just because NATO has relied too heavily on the U.S. for 75 years does not mean it should do so in perpetuity. Our circumstances have changed. The U.S. cannot afford to be Europe’s primary protector -they have to step up.
Plus, we have other fish to fry. China is our main adversary, and we have to pivot to firming up our alliances in the Pacific. The world is not a safe place; Europe must better share the burden of protecting the free world. Peace actually does come through strength, a lesson Europe is just discovering.
