Trump's Witless Slam On NATO

Russian autocrat and thug Vladimir Putin must be overjoyed at what his minion, sociopathic popular vote loser Donald "Rump" Trump had to say at a public NATO event in Brussels. It was embarrassing enough that Rump publicly and thuggishly chastised the two-dozen NATO members standing near him with his complaint about "paying their fair share" toward NATO, as many of the assembled leaders wore shocked looks. The clueless buffoon continued to misrepresent the situation as a "payment" to the U.S., rather than a commitment by them to spend two percent of their budgets on defense. Far worse, he refused to back Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which says that an attack on one member is an attack on all. The article was last invoked when NATO allies sent troops to Afghanistan after 9-11. That omission will have champagne corks popping in the Kremlin, which has its eyes on NATO's Baltic States, and eastern European allies, and wants a weakened, ineffective NATO.

The expectation that Rump would mend ties with NATO, after campaigning on the issue that NATO was "obsolete," has probably been dashed after this ham-fisted performance. He undercuts the importance of the U.S. keeping the NATO alliance strong, not only as a bulwark against terrorism but against an emboldened and aggressive Russian Federation with dreams of empire.