ANKARA, Turkey (Gray DC) – President Trump arrived in Ankara for a two-day NATO Summit Tuesday where leaders are working to project unity despite divisions over the U.S. war with Iran and the president’s threats to withdraw from the alliance.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan received Trump with a full military honor guard. At a bilateral meeting held an hour later, Trump openly criticized the NATO defense alliance.
“Why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars and they’re not there for us? We’ve always been there for them,” Trump said.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw the U.S. from NATO. Tuesday he said he is considering reducing America’s partnership with the alliance.
“And we don’t have to spend any money, we could remove all of our soldiers out of Europe because, as you probably know this, Europe’s a very different place than it was 20 years ago, with a lot of different lenses, much different. And they to be careful with immigration and energy, because if they’re not careful with those two things, you’re not going to have a Europe anymore,” Trump said.
Earlier, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte pushed back on the criticism, saying member nations are meeting their commitments.
“We are delivering on the commitments made in The Hague to invest in our defense. We will ensure that we are rebalancing for the better, fairly sharing responsibility for our shared security,” Rutte said.
The summit’s second day is expected to center on the war in Ukraine. Trump expressed optimism Tuesday that a deal to end the conflict is within reach, but said, “it takes two to tango.”
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