Mentally unstable sociopath and con man Donald "Cadet Bone Spurs" Trump sees every interaction with foreign governments much like he does with domestic politics: as a raw financial transaction, a process resembling extortion as in "pay up or else." That view has led him to undermine NATO (pleasing the Kremlin no end), to insist farcically that Mexico was paying for his vanity border wall, to propose buying Greenland from Denmark over their objections, and to demand that if we leave Iraq, they'll have to pay us for the privilege.
One of the things noticed in his bombastic interview with far-right propagandist Laura Ingraham the other day was his description of our military's relationship with the corrupt regime of Saudi Arabia, as reported in Rolling Stone:
"Saudi Arabia is paying us for [our troops]. We have a very good relationship with Saudi Arabia,” Trump said. “I said, listen, you’re a very rich country. You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us. They’re paying us. They’ve already deposited $1 billion in the bank.”
Trump continued, talking about U.S. troops as, essentially, mercenaries. “We are going to help them, but these rich countries have to pay for it. South Korea gave us $500 million… I said, ‘You gotta help us along. We have 32,000 soldiers in South Korea protecting you from North Korea. You’ve gotta pay.'” (our emphasis)Trump is turning our military into a mercenary force, whether it's defending the likes of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin "Bone Saw" Salman or providing a deterrent to an attack on South Korea by his love interest Kim Jong-Un.
Drawing on his experience as a career racketeer, Trump's selling protection and using our troops for that purpose. You know that if he could find a way to divert those payments into his own bank account, the treasonous buffoon would do it.
BONUS:
How much of that $1B has been transferred into the bank accounts of Trump or his family? This is why we need to see ALL of their tax returns.— JohnRJohnson (@JohnRJohnson) January 11, 2020
